


of unpublished rhyme

by brokendrums



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:06:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21798079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokendrums/pseuds/brokendrums
Summary: Seven days over a 1960s New York winter. Harry loses his coat, Niall’s playing for tips and they’re both just trying to scrape something together.
Relationships: Gigi Hadid/Zayn Malik, Niall Horan/Harry Styles, Niall Horan/Zayn Malik, Zayn Malik/Harry Styles
Comments: 13
Kudos: 53





	of unpublished rhyme

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Simon + Garfunkel - A Hazy Shade of Winter. 
> 
> I wasn't in New York in the '60s so take this with a grain of salt. Loosely inspired by Inside Llewlyn Davis. 
> 
> Warning for - mentions of drug use, abortion, and a loose interpretation of monogamy. The seven days are not seven days in a row but spread variously over a few weeks. I hope it's clear where the time jumps are.

**i**

The Gaslight is heaving -- the result of a harsh easterly wind and a rumour that Dylan himself was out and about. Harry wedges himself against the bar between a brute in a coat riddled with mildew and that nice Irish lad that Louis is always going on about. 

Unfortunately, it’s not Dylan on stage but Old Ruthie with her battered autoharp and her spoken word. Harry turns away from the stage, raises two fingers to the barman for a drink. Old Ruthie drones on, the cluster of heads tipped over sticky small tables nodding when she takes a breath, when they think they should, when they get a chance.

It’s a worn out act. All of them well-practiced in it. So regular that they never even have to listen.

When the basket is passed around, the Irish lad slips in a dollar. 

“High praise,” Harry murmurs to him, shuffling the basket along without putting anything in. Mildew Coat tries to pilfer the dollar _out_ of it but even Harry’s not that cruel, so he slaps at his hand and passes it on down the bar. 

“It was a good effort,” he replies, smirking. Harry glances around at him, having not expected him to reply. His cheek looks plump, like a thumb could -- should -- be pressed into it. It would mean your other fingers would span up the side of his face, just the right size and shape and angle. Harry blinks. “Tough crowd.”

“I think she must have an arrangement with Sam,” Harry says, nodding over to where Ruthie is stepping off the stage, Sam, the manager of the bar holding out his hand to her. “Second time this week she’s been spouting that drivel.”

“Thought you liked poetry,” comes the reply and Harry pauses, wondering how he knows that.

“It’s the harp, I have issues with, personally,” Harry says, turning back to him. He holds out a hand and pretends there isn’t a queasy nervousness in his belly for a sharp moment. “Harry,” he introduces himself. 

The guy doesn’t shake his hand, throwing his head back to laugh instead. “You are some character,” he says, straightening out so forcefully he curls over at the waist on the way up before finally reaching out to meet his hand. It’s warm and he gives him a squeeze, his fingers curling around Harry’s palm. “I’m Niall. We’ve met before.”

Harry cringes but covers it with a grin. “Just in case you were too drunk to remember.”

Niall laughs again, signalling for another round. “In case _I’m_ the drunk one?” 

Harry shouldn’t, his pockets are feeling a little light but he accepts the glass that’s set in front of him anyway. He can maybe slip away before he has to reciprocate.

“So you’re not a fan?” Niall asks, his eyebrows raised. He raises his hand easily in a gesture of _cheers_.

“Just here for the warmth, really,” Harry says, shaking his coat off his shoulders and fingering the side of the glass. He had only been planning to stay long enough until it was acceptable to go knocking on a few doors.

They make their way through three drinks, until Harry feels wobbly, his fingers fumbling as they clink the rim of their dirty glasses off each other. The bar had gotten busier, Harry moving to let other people in beside him to get a drink and Niall had made space for him between their seats. They’re not even talking sense anymore, Harry hooked on every nonsense word. 

Harry can feel the heat through his shirt. It bleeds into his skin, makes him warm from the inside out. It’s warmer than the bar, warmer than anything he had expected to find inside the Gaslight tonight. Niall’s giving him this look, heavy lidded and shadowy from the candle at his elbow but Harry thinks he can read it anyway. 

On stage, Old Ruthie is threatening to come back on for an encore. Harry turns, his back pressed to the bar until it digs into his spine, slumped back on his right elbow. He lifts a finger to his mouth, whistles for her. 

Niall laughs, much too loud and that’s how they find themselves out on the street. 

“My fucking coat,” Harry shouts as Sam slams the door in his face. There’s a queue still lingering on the street outside, a few girls with their hair too curled, too bouffant to suit the grot that lives in the corners of the Gaslight. 

“It’s fucking freezing,” Niall says from behind him. When Harry spins, stumbling slightly, he sees Niall through the white plumes of his breath. 

“At least you have your fucking coat,” Harry complains, shoving his fingers into the pockets of his trousers. There’s a hole in the left that he can wriggle his finger into and feel the heat of the skin close to his groin. 

Niall cocks his head, his mouth turning up into a smile. He has too much hair on the top of his head and it flops over, a curl of it near his temple. He holds out a hand, his knuckles brushing the cuff of his coat. 

Harry stares at it enviously for a moment before he stumbles over to him, curling into the heat of Niall’s front. 

Niall laughs -- that laugh again -- but this time Harry _feels_ it. He tries to crawl into the scratchy wool, two arms down one sleeve, the heat of Niall’s armpit hidden away under layers of clothes. 

“You’re insane,” Niall tells him through laughter, his breath hot and wet against Harry’s jaw. He smells rank of whiskey. “We’ll be stoned, jumped in an alley larking about like this.”

“I’d do it,” Harry slurs, determined to crawl into Niall’s clothes. Niall puts up token protest, twisting out from Harry’s arms only to curve back into them again. “Do it all as long as it was with you.”

Niall snorts, his head tipping back. “How profound. Are you a writer by any chance?”

Harry ignores the jibe and presses his nose to Niall’s throat, listens for the heartbeat there. His jaw is rough when it brushes against Harry’s temple. He’s gone still, his breathing shallow. Harry can feel it. The pound of his heart, the rush of the blood. 

He steps back and it’s too cold without him pressed up against his chest, his fingers in the places where they shouldn’t, close to him. 

“You got a home to go to?” Niall asks him but there’s something off. Something too jittery in it. He glances up the street to where the girls are still standing in line. 

Someone saw. 

“Sure,” Harry says. He’s just not sure where it is yet. He turns towards the mouth of the street as if it’ll magically point homeward.

It’s bitingly cold. He presses his fingertips to his lips, resists sticking them all the way into his mouth. The plan that had been simmering away at the back of his head as he had sat in the Gaslight had been that he might worm his way back to his new friend’s house, sleep on the floor if he can’t sleep in his bed, but the invitation hadn’t come as easy as he had thought. 

He might have to call on the Winston’s -- once a paradise, now very much a last resort since The Incident. It’s been weeks but Harry’s never cycled through his friends’ sofas as quickly before. He slips his index finger in, presses it against the tip of his tongue. The key for their apartment is in the lining of his coat. _Fuck_.

“My key,” he says uselessly, waving at the closed Gaslight door vaguely. It nearly sounds like a line and for a hot moment, Harry’s even embarrassed for himself. 

“Come on,” Niall says, slinging a friendly arm over his shoulders. An unnecessary apology. Harry presses into the warmth gratefully. “I know a place where we can go.”

Harry smiles beatifically, lets him lead the merry way, all tucked up beside him.

It turns out it isn’t very far. Just a few blocks and then a sharp left until they’re standing in front of a grand old building that’s seen better days. Niall had kept up inane chatter but Harry hadn’t been listening, his ear pressed up close to Niall’s throat to hear the vibrations of his breathing instead. 

Harry can hear the noise of the party from the steps outside so he knows that this isn’t Niall’s place. Niall lets go of him to ring the doorbell -- a complicated looking old thing that Niall seems familiar with -- before the door unlatches and Niall’s tugging him inside. It’s an old house -- bay windows and tall ceilings that’s been turned into separate flats. The front hall is dirty, the once shining floor tiles now grey with dusty footprints and slush. 

Niall leads him up towards the noise, the door ajar at the mouth of the stairs. Harry has a vague memory of being here before, there’s a familiarity in the peeling wallpaper and burning incense. The once gold bannister faded with wear. 

“Well, well, well!” someone yells in Niall’s ear. “Look who finally fucking turned up!” Harry catches the way the hand lingers on his shoulder, a finger hooked into Niall’s collar and then he’s engulfed by the crowd, disappearing into the writhe of arms and elbows and hips. 

Inside, Harry is enveloped in the clammy heat that can only be generated from other bodies. A wall is painted garishly orange, the rest of them paling in comparison but still a sickly yellow. There’s other colours but they bleed together in the heat of the room. Smoke spirals up from clutches of shoulders, heads tipped together as people talk loudly over the sound of the record player. 

There’s people trying to dance a space between the crowds, shoulders bumping into each other, stray hands being tugged into the melee as they groove to the saxophone. It’s hotter as he edges around them, can nearly feel the sweat on his nape at the sight of how close they’re pressed. 

The tiny kitchen is packed too, a cupboard hanging open to reveal the empty shelves behind that have been ransacked for treasure. There’s a half empty wine glass in the sink, a tiny one that reminds Harry of the cheap Italian restaurant he sometimes is able to wrangle a plate of sickly sweet pasta for doing a load of their washing. They’d give him an inch of claret in a glass and disappear with the carafe for a table that was actually paying. 

Harry picks it up, doesn’t even wash out the sticky residue at the bottom and lifts a bottle of whiskey from the counter. It might belong to the blonde who’s lying across the tiny kitchen table, her knee hooked over a denim clad hip. They’re busy, mouths smacking together so Harry tops the glass off whilst they’re distracted. Someone’s cracked open a benzedrine capsule too, the dust sprayed over the grimy two ring hob but the paper gone. Harry runs a finger across it, feeling how it’s sticky with mysterious grease and pops it into his mouth anyway. 

Back in the living room, he finds Niall in the dance-circle, the group now considerably larger than when he had left for the kitchen. Harry takes a gulp of the whiskey, feels it burn at the back of his throat and up behind his nose. 

Niall’s pink with sweat already, the top buttons of his shirt undone and coat gone as he dances close with someone. Her hair is long, nearly at her waist when she tips her head back, her neck bared for him. She’s wearing a loose silk shirt, the lapels of it gaping, the tails slipping under Niall’s fingers. She arches, her body rolling into his as he keeps her upright with a hand pressed to the base of her spine. 

Harry should probably feel awkward watching but he’s not the only one, everyone in the room is entranced -- they’re putting on quite the show. 

Niall’s free hand goes to the shock of dark hair, his fingers sinking into it as he rolls against her. His mouth lands on her collarbone, his tongue pink against her bare skin. 

She grins, just like Harry would if he was her. A flash of white teeth sinking into red lips. 

Harry’s throat burns. 

There’s disappointment in reading the signals wrong -- or more like reading them right and not getting anywhere -- but this is something else too. A burning to be there in the middle of the room, to have all the eyes in the room on him as he and Niall danced, to have Niall’s hands on the sweaty crease of his hip, a hand to his jaw. 

Niall’s eyes snap open as he pulls away, blown wide and already more blurry than when they were outside the Gaslight. Harry wonders if it’s the girl or the benzedrine. If it’s Niall or him.

“Fucking hell,” someone in the crowd yells as the song changes, the loop of the jazz piano lifting. The crowd surges around them and Harry gulps at the rest of the whiskey. Niall’s eyes flash and then he’s back to the girl, his hand sliding down to touch her thigh where her skirt has ridden up. Both of them still dancing to their own tune.

Harry turns, spinning into the crush of strangers and tries to find something -- someone -- else to distract himself with. He lets himself be pulled into someone’s arms, grinds his hips against a willing body but the floor is too full, he gets passed from one to another until he’s at the mouth of the room again. 

He finds the kitchen, topping off his glass with whatever bottle comes to hand. The couple on the table have moved, someone else in their place. They’re not as attractive to look at, something sorry in the way they’re clutching at each other and Harry has to turn away, his stomach turning as the high kicks in.

It could be minutes, it could be hours, Harry’s not quite sure, but Niall’s not dancing when he finds him again. The girl is just doing up her blouse, her lipstick smeared across her mouth and she winks at him in the bathroom mirror when Harry pushes open the door. 

Niall’s half lying in the bathtub, his leg hooked over the end and his trousers gaping open. He’s still wearing his shoes and Harry stares at them so he doesn’t have to look at the girl. 

“Whoops,” Harry says, his nails digging into the splintering wood of the doorjamb so he doesn’t fall over. The whiskey is all catching up with him and making his chest swoop. 

The girl laughs and throws her hair over her shoulder, Harry can smell the perfume of it, clean sweat and sex.

“I need a piss,” Niall complains, his voice fucked. He rolls his neck and then pulls himself out of the bath, his trousers dragging down from his waist. 

Harry swings into the bathroom, staggering across the wrinkled linoleum. “Needa lay.” Need a bed, a place to stay.

Niall laughs, twisting away from him. Harry’s fingers skim over his chest, feeling how clammy he still is, how sticky. His shirt has been unbuttoned further, the gape of his lapels showing off a nipple and pale underbelly. 

They seem to oscillate, gone to the far side of the room, a knee against the rim of the tub and then drifting together, pressing close. The girl’s long gone.

Harry’s fucked, his fingers numb and face tingling. Someone’s put on the new Beatles record loud in the other room and his head goes swimmy with the sitar. 

Niall takes a breath, Harry can taste how hot he is on his tongue, can smell him this close, all flowery perfume and the hot swell of sex.

His mouth presses to Niall’s throat, tongue to pulse point, teeth to vein, and then he’s being turned away as Niall bounces over to the toilet, his arms jerking. “Do needa--”

Harry watches him from the sink -- the arch of his back, the roll of his hips as he shakes himself out of his trousers. Niall laughs when their eyes meet, his skin permanently stained pink. 

“This get you off?” he asks leisurely, piss catching the rim of the toilet. 

Harry thinks of lying. Chooses not to. He skims his hand down to the front of his trousers, feels himself half hard and curls his fingers around the coarse wool of his trousers. “Can’t complain.”

Niall laughs brightly, stumbling as he does up his fly. 

Harry feels nearly brave, the false bravado he gets when he’s fucked and wants to fuck. He steps forward, tries to cover up how he stumbles. He’ll need to lie down in a minute.

Niall’s face slips, his hand jerking under the water. He splashes water at him from the sink and then turns away from him, nearly shy. 

Harry doesn’t have headspace to wonder what he’s thinking, just licks the wetness off his lips, his gaze on himself in the mirror. 

The moment stretches on for a minute or two and then Niall shakes his head, his smile growing across his face as he ducks his head on his way back out into the swell of music.

**ii**

There’s someone on the windowsill, the cracked window letting in a stiff, frigid breeze. Except, this time it’s unnecessary because there’s no heat of bodies, none of them packed into the tight living room.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” the person asks, courteously. 

Harry watches as he blows a ring of smoke from his mouth, his lips glossy. Harry needs a drink of water, nearly swallows his tongue. 

The house looks different without the bustle of a party. Cluttered with glasses, empty bottles and an array of crushed benzedrine capsules. There’s colour splashed on the walls, both abstract and more structured, the sweeping lines of obscure figures stretching up towards the ceiling. It looks washed out in the winter sunlight coming over Zayn’s shoulders, less haunting in the corners of the room. Even the orange looks more sedate.

Ah, yes. Zayn. That’s whose house he’s in.

“Are you not cold?” Harry asks instead of answering, his throat raw. He wonders how much he drank, unsure of when he went to sleep. He closes his eyes and sees Niall, feels him at the end of his fingertips. Just out of touch. He tries to remember beyond the wall of people, the rousing rabble of a piano and crush of dancing in the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom. More whiskey in his glass, powder under his tongue. 

Zayn’s still there when he opens his eyes again. He shrugs, lights another cigarette.

Harry drags himself to the end of the sofa but then stops again. His head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton wool and Zayn looks away from him, already bored. Harry sways when he gets to his feet, thinks about offering to help tidy up. It’s the least he could do for Zayn letting him stay, he’d need to if Zayn’s couch can be added to his list of possible beds for a night in the future. He’s got no idea where Niall is -- if they squeezed onto the sofa together or if he’s lurking in a bedroom of his own somewhere, the girl with the long hair his bedmate. 

“So,” Harry starts and then has to clamp his mouth closed again. The room spins for a while, sitar looping out of the record player near Zayn’s elbow. Ink is splotched around his wrist, black smeared up over his forearm. Harry blinks until the number comes into focus and when he closes his eyes he can feel the imaginary brush of Niall’s fingers at his elbow holding him steady for the pen. 

When he opens his eyes, Zayn is staring at him. He blows smoke out of the corner of his mouth and then: “See you around.”

Harry lurches towards the door, his feet carrying him before his body can protest. He’s not going to push his luck. 

He pukes in the drain, the snow turned to slush. 

Three stories up above, Zayn watches on. 

Harry’s boots let in water as he trudges towards the Gaslight. MacDougal is a ghost town this early so it shouldn’t really be surprising when he bangs on the door and no one answers. Harry had been under the impression that Sam lived there -- he never seemed to be out of the place -- but there’s resolutely no answer after Harry shakes the door handle. 

Steam hisses out of a grate behind him and the whole street smells of damp and rot and oil. It turns Harry’s stomach, now making a distinct growl when he thinks of how little he’s had to eat the past few days. He has to stamp his feet a few times to bring the feeling back to his toes as he stares out into the grey gloom of the morning. 

There’s a phonebox a few feet away that Harry tucks himself inside to escape the windchill. It smells of piss but it’s a brief respite from the whip of wind. 

He thinks of the numbers he knows off by heart -- his parents house, his sister, Ben. All out of the question. It’s one thing to turn up begging at a doorstep three sheets to the wind, quite another when you’re already feeling sorry for yourself.

There’s a coin rattling around his boot and Harry’s thankful it hasn’t slid out the hole in the toe yet. The number etched across his forearm is smeared -- is that a seven or a one?? -- and he stands with his forehead pressed against the frigid glass waiting for someone to pick up. 

“Clinton 581,” comes a frail voice over the line. Harry nearly drops the receiver, not expecting it. Maybe it was a seven after all. “Hello?” 

Harry shakes himself. “Hello, is Niall there? Please.”

He feels suddenly nervous, his palms sweating. The woman is Irish but that could still mean it’s the wrong house. He has no idea where Niall lives, thought it was maybe with Liam in that warehouse of his or on out towards Brooklyn.

“Yes,” comes the voice again and Harry’s stomach swoops. How many Niall’s could there be in Hell’s Kitchen?

“Can I speak to him, please?” 

“It’s Sunday.”

Harry closes his eyes and suppresses a groan. He doesn’t need to be fucking reminded. 

“You should know not to call on a Sunday, young man. Niall’s needed at home.”

“It would just take a moment,” Harry says, on the edge of pleading. “Please, Mrs --”

Harry bangs his head gently off the glass. He doesn’t even know Niall’s second name.

The old woman huffs a breath. “John wouldn’t have it --”

Somewhere in the distance there’s another voice, faint but recognisable. _Maggie, who is it?_ Harry’s insides give a lurch of hope but then the line goes dead. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Harry says, banging his forehead gently on the glass. He drops the receiver back onto the phone and pulls off his boot again, hunting for another dime.

He startles when the phone begins to ring, dropping his boot into a suspicious puddle. After a moment’s hesitation he picks it up. 

“Hello?” Niall asks down the phone and Harry lets out a breath. 

“Hi,” Harry says quickly. “Um, it’s me, Harry.”

Niall laughs. “Well, well.”

“Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday,” Harry says as politely as he can manage and Niall laughs again, his voice going muffled for a moment before the environment around him changes and it sounds much quieter. Harry imagines him stepping into a cupboard or another room, maybe something as claustrophobic as a phone booth. 

“I’m surprised she even knew what day of the week it was,” Niall says. He sounds far too chipper for the time of the morning. Harry wonders why he doesn’t sound like he’s been dragged through a hedge, like Harry does. 

“Oh,” Harry says, relief settling in the middle of his chest. “Fancy a drink, then?”

“I can’t,” Niall says. “Sorry. I do actually have to help out at home.”

“Oh,” Harry tries not to let the disappointment sound on his voice but it seeps out anyway. “That’s fine. I understand.”

There’s a pause, Harry can hear Niall hesitating. 

“Well, alright then,” Harry feels himself saying, anything to round off how awkward it’s getting. He’s already mentally rolling through who he could grovel to next. 

Niall takes a deep breath. “Why don’t you come over?”

Harry takes his time, his mind jump starting. He’s glad that Niall’s the one picking up the bill for this call. “Come over?”

Niall breaks into a nervous laugh. “I work the bar on a Sunday, let my uncle stay home. You could come for a drink there? We could --” Niall pauses again and it’s that big intake of air --”have a chat.”

Harry grins to himself. A _chat_. 

“Sure,” Harry murmurs. “A chat would be nice.”

Niall huffs a laugh and Harry feels it down to his numb toes. 

*

Harry kills an hour in Washington Square Park before winding his way up to Hell’s Kitchen. He listens to a group of buskers who have taken to drumming, with varying degrees of success, various objects that look salvaged from a derelict building. 

The sun comes out a little, a bright crisp blue sky as the clouds clear. He manages to dry out his boots a little on a creaky bench but his ears and nose still feel like they could drop off with the cold.

He ducks into a bathroom to wash his face but by the time he’s sliding into the pub, he still feels awfully grimy. 

The front of the bar is glass plated, letting in light into the first few feet of the bar. The rest of it is cosy and dim, the low wooden ceilings heavy with framed photographs and scraps of flags strung between the awnings. There are old fashioned sconces along the wall emitting low light over a few wooden booths at the front and along the right hand side is a shining bar, the shelves laden with glass bottles of every size and colour. 

At the back of the room, under a carved whitewashed arch is a fire, roaring with enough intensity that Harry can feel the heat envelope him as soon as he’s in through the door. 

“Ah,” Niall says, looking up from where he’s bent over the bar talking with someone. “Here we are.”

Harry feels self conscious as he edges over the stone flags, his boots squelching. The bar isn’t empty by any means and his presence alone shouldn’t be drawing attention but he feels as if everyone turns to look at him. 

“Hi,” Harry says, feeling nearly shy. Niall’s hardly moved from his perch by the bar. The two men he’s been talking to stare at Harry unabashedly and Harry finds that he can’t look away. They’re older, weathered in a way that Harry can see in himself sometimes. One has a patchy beard, white foam caught in his top lip. The other has the bluest eyes and Harry suspects he’s related to Niall, the same soft frown on his face, the same gentle mouth. They have battered hands, gnarled fingers around the base of their glasses. Harry takes in the leathery looking skin, the bruised and scraped knuckles. How the wool is unravelling from the cuff of a jumper, the elbows rubbed away. 

“What’ll it be?” Niall asks, drawing Harry’s attention back to him. He’s smiling at him, something glinting in his eye. He looks clean and well rested and Harry has never felt the shirt cling to his back more in comparison. Niall doesn’t seem to mind though, his expression easy, his mouth curled just so. He leans up and Harry can see a third pint of Guinness behind his elbow, the white dragging down the inside of the glass where Niall’s it half drunk. 

Harry hesitates, not knowing what to get. It’s still pretty early and he’s had hardly anything to eat, just the corner of a loaf of bread the buskers were sharing round.

“Uh,” Harry hums. “Can I have a coffee maybe?”

One of the men snorts and for a moment, Harry feels a heat begin at the back of his neck. 

Niall grins, pushing off the bar. “A coffee,” he murmurs with no inflection to let Harry know if he’s just made a fool out of himself. 

He waits while Niall disappears somewhere behind the bar. The two men have went back to murmuring to each other, their accents so thick and gruff that Harry couldn’t join in if he tried. In a fog-edged mirror behind the bar, Harry can see the table behind him, two couples laughing over drinks. There’s a booth by the door filled too and another patron at the other end of the bar, the Sunday paper spread out in front of him. 

Just as Niall emerges from a low door behind the bar, two more come in from the street, bringing with them a gust of frigid air. 

“Pat,” Niall acknowledges them with a tip of head, sliding a cup of steaming coffee over to Harry. There’s another glass, a nip of something strong and Niall slides it across the gleaming bar to sit beside the mug. “To wash all that coffee down.”

Harry laughs, this time along with the two men at his elbow and reaches forward to shake his hand. It’s an odd thing to do but it’s nearly instinct, his hands itching to touch him. Niall doesn’t look surprised, meeting him half-way. 

“You’re freezing,” Niall says, his fingers lingering in the curl of Harry’s knuckles. He’s frowning, his eyes dropping down to the thin jumper and two shirts Harry’s still wearing from yesterday, as if he’s just remembering that Harry’s lost his coat. Harry shrugs and glances away. He knows he nearly looks homeless. Doesn’t mention that he technically is. 

“Go on down by the fire in the snug,” Niall tells him, cocking his head in the direction of the back of the pub. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

Harry lets go of his hand, edging past the stools as Niall drifts off to serve Pat and his mate. 

The snug is under the archway, a room a third of the size of the rest of the bar with a cluster of small tables barely big enough to set a few glasses on. There’s a window out onto the street so Harry can see the snow start to drift again and it lets in enough clear light that he can pull the notebook out of his back pocket and see well enough to write. 

Here, too, there’s framed photographs. Stark landscapes and old cottages curled against the slope of a street. There’s a slate of photographs of horses, all standing formally tall. One after the other and names etched into the paper -- Rosa, Persimmon, Vaeda. Portraits of nameless men, shoulders broad and straight, hair cut short, sepia-ed and mottled with age.

His coffee is cool enough to drink by the time he surveys them all, his bones thawing by the hearth. He doodles a copy of a portrait of a young man, the gleam of youth caught in his stoic expression, from a glass plate beside him and throws the whisky down as well. 

It burns brighter than the coffee, warms him from the inside out. He shades around the figure, turning the page when Niall arrives, the features melding on the paper into his familiar form. 

“Sorry,” Niall apologises, setting a plate onto the edge of the table. It smells divine and Harry nearly doesn’t catch the rest of Niall’s sentence because he’s so busy taking it in. Ham and carrots, three floury potatoes broken so the butter can run in rivults through them.

\--”you don’t mind, do you?”

Harry glances up, realising he’s nearly drooling. “What?”

Niall’s face breaks into a nervous smile. “There’s a rush on for the dinner but after I can come down and speak to you properly. You don’t mind?”

Harry shakes his head, feeling nearly too scared to speak in case his voice would break. Niall gives him another smile and disappears back to the rest of the bar, which Harry notes does sound much more busy now. 

He forces himself to wait until Niall’s away a few seconds before he reaches for the food. He could nearly eat with his fingers he’s that hungry, suddenly glad that Niall’s not staying to witness him wolf down the entire plate. For a long moment, Harry wonders what he’s going to do when he has to pay, what his escape plan is but his stomach turns again, all empty apart from curdling coffee and whiskey and he puts it out of his mind. 

“It was alright, then?” Niall asks with a smile nearly an hour later when he returns. Harry grins and looks away from where he’d nearly licked the plate. Niall laughs brightly and slides a pint over to him, sinking into the chair beside Harry. 

“Just disappointed it wasn’t corned beef and cabbage,” Harry says sarcastically.

Niall stares at him, his hands tightening round his pint. Harry feels a wave of dread and stares back, his jaw dropping slightly. Fuck. He’s put his fucking foot in it and Niall was kind enough to give him dinner. For free. A fucking good dinner at that. 

“I didn’t mean --” Harry start, grasping at straws. “Sorry, I didn’t -- fuck --”

Niall cackles, white on the top of his lip. Harry’s gut drops and he feels himself sag back into the chair. “Shit.”

Niall laughs louder, rolling until he’s bent double, his free hand slapping out to land on Harry’s knee. It’s warm and makes him jolt but it feels nice, his palm over his entire knee cap. 

“Corned beef is for you fuckers who think they’re Irish,” Niall laughs, reaching to set his pint on the table top. He’s closer than he was before and Harry can’t stop looking at him this close, cataloguing every freckle and hair on his face, a shadow under his eye, the spot just below his nose. 

There’s still froth on his lip.

“I’m not --” Harry starts to say his mother’s English, anyway, but finds he can’t finish.

Niall grins, his head cocking to the side. “Good. Wouldn’t want us to fall out.” 

“No,” Harry murmurs, leaning closer. Nothing’s going to happen -- they’re still too out in the open even in the snug at the back of the pub but Harry can feel that lure, the magnetic pull from below his stomach right up to his chest. 

Niall’s leaning closer too, his eyes dropping to Harry’s mouth but at the last moment he pulls away, shaking himself. There’s a beat of silence as they straighten, Harry clearing his throat. 

“What are you writing?” Niall asks, eyeing his notebook wedged under the rim of his dinner plate. 

Harry shrugs, glancing away. Niall’s knee nudges his. It hadn’t been much -- just a few details of the pub in case he’s never invited back, the warm wallpaper and the fire. It had meandered into a few lyrics, the words squeezed in around the lines of his drawings. He can feel the press of Niall’s knee cap solid at the juncture of his knee and thigh.

Harry’s heart thumps at the bottom of his throat. It’s nearly too hot in the snug, the fire making everything warm and swimmy and Harry feels himself say, “do you want to see?”

Niall lets out a little breath, his mouth turning up. “Of course.”

It’s daunting letting someone else read what he’s written. He doesn’t think he’s ever willingly showed them to anyone unfinished before. He prefers to weave them into songs and then sing them on the corner of the street, in the shower, drunk at the end of a party where it’s hard for anyone to criticise too harshly. 

He watches Niall, looks for cracks in his smile or a glint in his eye that tells him he’ll take the piss. It’s too difficult to try and discern his expression. Harry glances away, stares at the photo frames again. 

“These lyrics?” Niall asks, his hand reaching out to touch Harry’s forearm to get his attention. He pauses, both of their eyes looking down at where they’re touching. 

Harry clears his throat. “Sort of? I’ll turn them into songs. Most of them are just rubbish at the minute, stuff I’m thinking, things I see. Need to make them more...” Harry stops, not sure what he’s trying to say. 

Niall’s mouth turns up. “Song-like.”

Harry laughs. “Well yes. Sometimes they take a while to... fit. Want them to be more than a story.” 

“Nothin’ wrong with a story,” Niall grins and turns back to the book, his fingers look long as they turn the page. “Plenty of people just write a story, it’s the foundation of any song.”

Harry swallows and watches Niall’s eyes flit across the page, actually reading them. 

“They’re not the right kind,” Harry says, defensive for a moment. He doesn’t really know what he thinks when he’s writing, always looking for that something more, that little extra that would push him up over the heads of everyone else that pollutes the stage at the Gaslight. 

“You just need a burst of inspiration,” Niall says, his thumb curling the corner. “Something to write about.”

“Someone, maybe,” Harry says, shrugging. Niall stares at him and then he sits back, takes another swig of his drink. Harry’s gut clenches and he’s reaching out, his thumb brushing over Niall’s cupids bow before he can stop himself. The remnants of the head of his pint comes off but Harry finds himself lingering. 

Niall’s eyes flash and Harry feels caught, unsure where the time went between his hand being curled around his pencil to touching Niall’s mouth. 

“Sorry --” Harry starts, his hand cupping around Niall’s jaw as if that was what it was made to do. His fingertips reach up over his cheek bones. Harry doesn’t know how he’ll let go now that he’s been able to touch. Niall lets out a breath, hot against the pad of Harry’s thumb. 

“That’s --” Niall murmurs, his mouth brushing against Harry’s fingers. His lip drags against the inside of his knuckle, tantalisingly wet. Harry licks his lips, mouth dry with anticipation. 

“Niall!” booms a voice and they’re rocketing apart from each other, the arm of the chair digging sharply into Harry’s back as he slams himself to the otherside of the seat. Niall looks as shocked, whipping round to see a man about their age duck under the arch and into the snug. “There you are, fuck sorry we’re running a bit late. Laura arsing about as usual, should’ve fucking left her behind.”

Under his arm an harassed looking woman shoves him out of the way. She’s carrying a neat box of a case as well as a handbag, a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck. “Get fucked, Deo. You don’t even need to be here.”

Niall glances back at Harry, throwing him a shy smile before he’s on his feet, ushering the rest of the group through the archway and into the opposite corner of the snug. 

They’re loud, bickering amongst themselves as they unpack an array of instruments and rid themselves of thick woolen coats. Laura unwraps the scarf, shedding her coat and throwing them into the seat beside Harry without a word to him. 

Harry’s eyes catch on the bump under her skirt and glances away, feeling a swell of heat at his collar.

Niall bundles the man called Deo back out towards the bar, their heads tucked together as Deo launches into a gripe about something Laura’s done and they appear back ten minutes later, hands full of glasses and a pint for everyone. 

“Are you trying to wind me up?” Laura asks when Niall passes her a drink. 

Niall splits into a nervous grin and raises his hand up in defense. “Sorry, slipped my mind.”

“As if you could forget it,” Deo gripes again, taking a slug of his pint and setting it up on the mantel between two vases. He stands with his back to the fire and starts to roll his sleeves up. “Her and the Scot never give over about it.”

Laura huffs a breath and unclasps the box case. Harry leans over to have a look, nestled in a plush red velvet is a gleaming concertina. 

“Oh, you told him then?” The other man asks. He’d been sitting in the corner, his feet crossed at the ankle watching the scene unravel in front of him. He has a set of complicated tubes and pipes in his lap but looks entirely disinterested in the fight that’s brewing in front of him. 

“Don’t you start,” Laura snaps, blowing her fringe out of her hair. “Of course I told him. It’s his, isn’t it?”

“A tragedy on all accounts,” Deo murmurs, hitching a fiddle onto his shoulder and plucking a few strings. 

Harry watches as they set up, Deo and then, to his surprise, Niall tuning the violin. They all make it through another pint before they’re settled in a semi circle in front of the arch and Harry’s had to move back into the main bar lest he be trapped behind them.

“The acoustics are fucked in the snug,” Niall tells him, taking up spot behind the taps. He had ushered Harry out with a hand on his back. There’s another lad, the image of Deo, pouring whiskey beside him. “Wasn’t built for music.”

Harry glances around the pub and sees how it’s filled while he was next door, people squeezed into booths and perched on low stools right in the middle of the floor. Harry had to wind his way around groups of people, shoulders at hip height, to make it to the bar.

This room clearly _is_ built for music because once they start, the sound carries above the din of people talking, the rustle of coats and the clink of glasses against each other. 

It’s bright and fast, Harry watching with interest as Laura’s fingers dance over the buttons of the corcentina. She’s sandwiched between the other man -- Bressie -- and the last of the band, Eoghan. 

They cycle through a number of songs, threading them together seamlessly. At one point a man stands up from the crowd, producing a whistle from his pocket and joins in. 

It’s nothing like anything he hears at the Gaslight, there’s been a run of Irish folk singers -- solo with a lone guitar -- lately but this is more vibrant, more alive. A whole band of merrymaking. 

Maybe it’s the buzz of the crowd, the way they seem to be able to respectfully listen whilst carrying on their own conversations, how they tap their feet, the clap of their hands sinking like a rhythm into his bones. 

“Someone will be up dancing next,” Harry comments as another person arrives in the door with an instrument. Harry laughs as the makeshift band make room for him without stopping, shuffling in chairs mid-fiddle, nudging pints on the floor with gentle tapping toes. They curl around each other, squeezed into the space in front of the bar with the audience up by their knees.

Niall smirks, taking a sup of his own pint. “Well, you enjoy a dance.”

“I enjoy the spectacle.” Harry tries not to smile but it’s hard, Niall’s grin is contagious. They stare at each other for a moment, Niall meeting his gaze easily. 

“So, this the music you like to play?” Harry asks, steering the conversation away from such blatant flirting. Niall’s cousin is standing beside them and Harry doesn’t fancy him overhearing. He's not sure how he couldn't, Harry finds himself nearly shouting over the din of the crowd.

Niall shrugs. “Not all the time. It can be a nice slice of home, though.” He looks sad for a moment, his mouth turning up bittersweet. “Usually prefer the guitar.”

“Me too,” Harry agrees and Niall leans on the bar, his hands interlaced in front of him. Harry stares at his fingers, tries not to think of them playing guitar, plucking over strings, running up over a fret. Niall has big hands, Harry decides. Not has big as his own but big enough to take up space on his skin. He has to look away before his mind runs off to imagine them placed somewhere on his body. 

“Where is it then?” Niall asks. 

Harry blinks down at the shining surface of the bar. “Erm,” he says, trying not to sound as uncomfortable as he feels. “Left it at my --”

Niall raises an eyebrow as Harry hesitates. Harry isn’t sure what to call Ben and Meredith. They were never in a proper relationship but they were so much more than just friends.

Niall smiles reassuringly. “You don’t have to tell me. No pressure.”

Harry fights not to sigh too audibly. “It’s just a bit complicated. It’s at my friends’ place where I’d been staying for a while. I left before I could grab all of my stuff.” 

Harry doesn’t mention that he was asked to leave, or rather told not to come back, Harry meeting Meredith in a freezing diner one morning before she went off to work. It had been misty and Harry could never work out how the fog settled so still when the streets were so busy. Harry had paid for the coffee that she never drank and she stared out the window over Harry’s shoulder the entire time she spoke, Harry’s gaze boring a hole into her head, soaking up her pale face in the grey morning light before she had to go. 

Niall nods and Harry can tell that he’s starting to feel just as awkward. It makes him cringe, draining his pint just for something to do. 

“It’s a bit of a long story. The key is in my coat.”

Niall raises his eyebrows again and for a moment, Harry feels prickly under his gaze. 

“You’re up,” Deo says, appearing at the end of the bar with an armful of empty glasses and saving them from any more awkwardness. He slides them onto the bartop and claps Niall heartily on the shoulder. 

“Nah,” Niall shakes his head, his hand going to one of the taps. He’s putting on a very good show at being a professional bar man. It brings him closer to Harry and Harry wonders if he wants to keep talking. “Not tonight.”

“ _Go_ on,” Deo says, giving him a shove. Niall’s fingers cling to the tap for a moment before he gives into the force of Deo’s arm. “Not giving you the option tonight.”

Harry watches Niall pull a face but there’s a small smile forming there too, like he can't really help it. Maybe it’s because it’s a full house, maybe it’s because Deo is already hollering for him, maybe it’s the thought of performing is just too good to properly hide. 

Harry gets it. He’s been itching for something himself since the music started. He has no idea how to take part but he wants a bit of it, feels the anticipation metallic on his tongue. He can only offer a tap of his toe, clapping when the crowd somehow senses a shift in a tune more upbeat as they meld together. 

Niall shoots Harry a glance that’s hard to read before he edges out from behind the bar, letting Deo slide seamlessly into his place.

“Seen him play before?” Deo asks, dish towel over a shoulder. He’s racking up another pint and Harry hopes it’s not for him, already feeling the queasy pull of being drunk. 

“No,” Harry says, not elaborating on how he hardly seems to know Niall at all. Across the pub, Niall is making himself at home amongst the other musicians, his face open and bright as he laughs at something someone says. He’s rolling his sleeves up, his fingers nimble and light and he’s hardly paying any attention as he rolls the cuff up over his elbow and tucking it so it stays up. 

Harry has to look away, his throat dry. 

“Aw, he’s good,” Deo’s saying, setting up the pint to let it settle before he’ll go back and top it off later. “Wasted here, to be honest, but s’pose, what else is he meant to do?”

Harry hums, barely loud over the din of the pub. There’s more people flooding through the door and squeezing around tables, someone dropping down onto his knees on the tiles when he can’t find a low stool. He knows the feeling, there’s plenty of them that have dreams of making it big but have to focus on making ends meet. 

“All we’re good for is minding the bar,” Deo is still talking. He smiles ruefully at Harry as if he’s known him forever. “A damn sight better than what we’d be at home, though. There is that.”

Each swing of the door brings a gust of December air that cuts through the heat of a full house. Within moments, the heat settles again around Harry’s knees, his ears. He reaches for the pint still settling beside him. 

Deo gives him a glittering grin, raising his own glass. 

“Right, Niall,” Bressie is saying at the front of the bar, his hand on Niall’s shoulders. It’s hard to hear them properly over the crowd but they seem to settle once the band start to talk. There’s a reverence there that Harry longs for, to have an audience at your beck and call. “Your choice.”

Niall looks away bashfully. “Aw, no. I’m just backing. Whatever _you_ want.”

“I’m a rambler, I’m a gambler --” Bressie intones and Niall grins, shaking his head. He strums the guitar, checks the tuning. On reflex, the others join in, a sharp burst of music all in perfect harmony. It’s honey on the ears. Harry wonders how the dynamic changes when you’re looking out for more than just yourself, the weight and comfort of a band against your shoulder. 

There’s a light on them, dim compared to the bright lamp at the bar but it sets something golden across Niall’s face. Harry can’t help but appreciate how he looks so comfortable, like he’s sinking into a second skin. Bressie and Laura and Eoghan stretch out and suck in until they’re a happy four, poised on a time that’s strung only between them four. 

“Rocky road!” someone crows from the crowd and Niall rolls his eyes as there’s a smattering of cheers and laughs. 

“Don’t think I’ve had enough pints for that one,” Niall says but he’s plucks a chord anyway, spreading his legs to settle the guitar across a knee. There’s a bit of jostling and yoho-ing and Niall keeps playing. 

“ _While in the merry month of May,_ ” Niall starts and there’s a cheer, Eoghan and Bressie breaking into roars of delight as they easily pick up the slip jig on the fiddle. 

Niall picks up speed, sings until he’s breathless, weaving the tune in and out of the concertina and strings. Harry’s genuinely unsure how he keeps up, his foot tapping time and his body giving into the pull and lull of the rhythmic tune. 

The entire bar breaks in at the chorus, _hunt the hare and turn her down the rocky road_ rousing and catching over the words _all the way to Dublin_. Harry looks over to Deo, half baffled at the shift in atmosphere. “What’s going on?”

Deo laughs, reaches across the bar to clap him on the shoulder. “It’s Sunday,” he says, shrugging, going to serve someone else. 

_whack, fo lol de da._

Harry turns back to look at the corner of the pub. Niall looks _alive_ , his face pink and bright with sweat and his entire body moves with it. He slips on a lyric, losing breath but he leans back to cackle, nothing heavy on his shoulders at messing up. The front few rows laugh with him, all included in the joke. 

Bressie nods his head and Niall glances over, laughter still on his lips and they segue, a split-second of a break as they catch the shift in jig and carry on, Harry’s head spinning, as they change trajectory. 

Another roar goes up in the crowd and they’re all singing something else, the whole pub in on it. 

Harry grins, his pint sweating in his hand. It’s not Sunday. 

It’s Niall. 

*

“Sssh,” Niall hushes him, being just as loud as Harry. Harry laughs again, stifling it with his palm. 

The bar looks funny from this angle but he stands, trying not to touch anything he shouldn’t as Niall finishes locking up and follows him through the little door and into the stairway of the house. It had taken a few tries but Niall had finally chucked everyone out, the lights dimmed and last orders called long ago. 

They stumble, Niall not turning on a light and Harry clumsy with the unfamiliar surroundings. The stairs creak and groan but finally they make it up without anyone waking. 

Niall’s room _is_ tiny, a narrow bed shoved into the corner and a slim uncurtained window that rattles in the wind. There’s hardly enough room for them both to stand at the same time once the door is wedged closed, Harry half leaning over the mattress to squeeze past Niall. 

“You fucking stink,” Niall complains. There’s a steadying hand to Harry’s hip and then he’s twisting away already sliding into the bed. He’s somehow kicked off his trousers and his legs look thin in the moonlight. Harry sees a tantalizing flash of the inside of his thigh as he rights himself, pulling the blankets up over his knee.

It’s warm, the fire below heating the entire house. He’ll only sweat more if he’s in bed this close to someone. 

“I know,” Harry agrees, feeling a flush of embarrassment way down below the floaty tipsy feeling he has. He toes off his shoes, floundering a little at what to do next. If it were anyone else, Harry would have kissed them by now, would have helped each other out of their clothes and tumbled into the bed before anything got this awkward. 

It hadn’t taken that long to wriggle into Ben’s bed or Nick’s or any of the others that was more than a kip on their sofa. Harry doesn’t think that Niall’s got anything against it either and Harry’s mind flashes back to him with his mouth on the girl’s neck at Zayn’s party, of him rearranging himself in the bathroom. 

Maybe Harry _is_ reading it wrong. Maybe this whole day _has_ been Niall being friendly and taking him in out of the goodness of his own heart. He must wait too long because Niall cracks open an eye, turns towards him. Harry’s face burns. 

“Harry,” Niall says plainly. He has no idea what he looks like curled on the sheets like that, his arm against the peeling wallpaper, moonlight across his chest. 

“Yeah,” Harry replies, tugging the ends of his shirts from his waistband. They stare at each other as Harry undresses. He has no idea what the fuck is going on but Niall’s gaze makes him shiver, the intensity of it, how it hardly wavers from his face as Harry sheds his jumper and shirts. 

Harry unbuttons his trousers, pushing them down his knees and Niall’s eyes snap down. Harry lets out a breath, the noise of it loud in the hush of the room before Niall’s gaze snaps back to his face. 

He crawls into the bed and feels suddenly sober. Niall rearranges the blanket awkwardly so it covers his legs and hips. Harry feels like he’s lost all function of his limbs, all four of them locking down so he’s lying ramrod straight staring at the ceiling, the edge of the bed hardly holding him with how much space he’s put between him and Niall. 

Niall shifts quietly in the sheets, rolling onto his hip. From the corner of his eye, Harry can see it’s awkward, the uncomfortable straight line of his shoulder. Harry shifts in response, an inch to the right to give him more room. 

Niall snuffles a laugh into the pillow they’re sharing. “Harry,” he whispers, his voice carrying. 

Harry turns his head, his neck straining. Niall’s hand skims over Harry’s chest and it makes him shiver violently, his body jerking. He nearly falls off the bed and with an embarrassed laugh he rolls over onto his side until he’s facing Niall too.

Niall grins, his eyes wide for a moment. His hand settles on the sweaty curve of Harry’s side, just above his hip. 

“Why are you so jumpy?” Niall whispers, his voice quiet and secretive. Harry closes his eyes, listens to his breathing. 

“Nervous sleeping in new places,” Harry lies -- he’d be screwed if he really was. Niall’s hand creeps along his side and Harry’s grateful it’s up and away from his groin. He’s had too much to drink but his body is putting in a valiant effort to show his interest.

Niall’s hand drops over his waist, the line of his forearm against his side. Harry jolts at the first touch of Niall’s fingertip against the small of his back, the tickle of his nail as he drags his fingertips over his skin in spirals. 

“Just keep talking,” Harry murmurs, feeling very close to Niall’s face. 

They could kiss. Harry thinks of just going for it. He knows, right in that moment that Niall would kiss back. At the bottom of the bed, their feet are touching and Niall’s hand is only trailing in larger circles, his fingers sending tingles up his spine with every rotation. 

They slide closer, their chests touching so Harry can feel each time Niall breathes. 

“About what?” Niall murmurs, his voice dropping lower. Harry feels the faint brush of his lips. Feeling daring, Harry lifts his hanid on Niall’s hip, feels the soft skin of his side and back. 

“Anything,” Harry says, their noses rubbing together. “Music, the pub, the weather --”

Niall’s quiet for a moment and Harry has a fleeting worry that he’s fucked up. Niall’s hand doesn’t stop though, slowly skimming up over his skin.

“I’ll be here two years next week,” Niall whispers, like it’s a secret. He has his palm pressed to Harry’s shoulder and Harry can’t help but roll into him, their thighs pressed tight. “Hardly feels like it’s been that long but sometimes I think back on what I’ve left behind. How the edges of my father’s face are fading, how I have a nephew that can write to me now. Big blocky letters on the end of my da’s letters. So much time has passed and I’m here like I’ve hardly moved at all.”

“Do you miss it?” Harry asks, feeling the beat of Niall’s heart against his sternum. 

“Yeah,” Niall answers quietly. “Sometimes. I miss the people and the quiet. It’s home, you know? I think it always will be.” 

“Yeah,” Harry murmurs. Home to him is actually just a train ride out of the city, his mother in a nice four bed, two bath, and white picket fence. 

It’s so much closer than Niall’s home but feels like it could be just as distant. 

“Would you go back?” Harry asks, his mouth brushing against a patch of stubble. Harry’s aware of every point they’re pressed together, hardly a hair between them. Niall seems to gravitate closer anyway. 

“Maybe,” Niall whispers, his voice raw and catching with how low he’s speaking. “Someday. But there’s so much more out there to see, you know? It’s not like here. Here feels like --”

Niall’s eyes glint in the moonlight and Harry tries to breathe. 

\--”opportunity,” Niall whispers. “It feels like even though it hasn’t happened yet, it’s just on the tip of my tongue. Everyday has a magic to it. Like if there’s just the right person in the crowd at the Gaslight or if someone happens to call in for a pint, a friend of a friend knows a guy someplace that needs someone on the guitar, someone likes the way I sound.”

Harry’s chest feels tight. He hasn’t felt that optimism in a long time, the hope and magic dampened each morning he wakes up on a friend’s mouldy couch. 

Niall huffs a mirthless laugh, his eyes fluttering closed. “It’s ridiculous. Don’t listen to me, too many pints.”

“It’s the American dream,” Harry murmurs. 

Niall laughs again, his whole body shifting closer to Harry’s. “The Irish one, more like. Leaving the old for the new and finding out it’s just as shite as it was at home.”

“Hey, as you say, all it takes is for someone to hear you on a street corner,” Harry says, his thumb pressing into supple skin. He cocks his head on the pillow, remembering their conversation earlier. “Maybe once you find your story --” he trails off wistfully, fighting to contain a grin.

Niall snorts loudly, his hip digging into Harry’s side. “You’re such a gobshite.”

Harry laughs into the pillow, his nose pressed against the cool skin of Niall’s shoulder.

**iii**

When they wake, they’re still pressed together. Harry’s not that surprised -- the bed is too narrow to go very far -- but they’re more tangled than they probably need to be. 

Harry’s burrowed under the covers, his face pressed to Niall’s sternum. Niall’s twisted under him, one knee lodged between Harry’s thighs and the other stretched out along the other side of the bed. There’s an arm under Harry’s neck, pillowing him from the awkward angle and the other is tucked between them, Niall’s knuckles brushing Harry’s chest. 

Harry takes in the moment and just breathes. They both smell of stale beer and staler sweat and the room is like a cold rain has washed in, the air feeling fresh and frigid at the same time. Too damp to feel like they’re really indoors. 

“Morning,” Niall croaks from above him and Harry stiffens, not realising he was awake. Niall’s still breathing slowly, his chest rising and falling rhythmically under Harry’s cheek. He doesn’t seem bothered that Harry’s basically lying across him. 

“What time is it?” Harry asks, mouth gummy. There’s a fresh layer of sweat on his skin from sleeping so close to someone. It’s warm underneath the covers and pressed this close to Niall but when he shifts back, the cool air of the room wafts under where the blanket had kicked up. “Fuck, it’s freezing.”

Niall hums, opening and closing his fist like his hand has gone numb. He looks bleary, crust in the corner of his eye. His hair is sticking up from the pillow and Harry doesn’t want to think what his looks like. 

“It’s early,” Niall says, curling more on his side again so he isn’t twisted so awkwardly. His leg rubs against Harry’s and he can’t tell if it was deliberate or not. Niall blinks innocently at him but the flush down his chest that makes Harry think that it was on purpose. “No heat in the morning. Especially this time of year.”

Harry doesn’t mention that it’s warmer than most places he wakes up these days. “Five more minutes,” Harry murmurs and Niall smiles, lifting his arm in invitation. 

“What do you fancy doing today?” Niall asks, a few lazy moments later. His hand drags up Harry’s back, each fingers making an impression on Harry’s ticklish skin. It’s not lost on Harry that Niall could easily tell him to sling his hook, shove him out of bed and his house like Zayn had yesterday once he’d woken up from their bender. 

Something’s broken between them during the night and Harry’s no longer feeling shy about squeezing tighter to him, an unmistakable rut of his hips against Niall’s leg. He feels the stirring of his dick and he swivels his hips in a slow grind. If he could get away with it, he’d stay in bed with Niall all day.

“We could go to Coney Island,” Harry murmurs, joking. He hooks his knee through Niall’s, his fingers at the line of Niall’s underwear. There’s no joke about that. 

Niall groans, just something quiet into the side of Harry’s head. His mouth moves against Harry’s temple and Harry feels a moment of regret that his hair is so dirty.

Niall’s body is hot and pliant, moves easily as Harry rolls into him. His hands gather at his back, grip at his hips and shoulders, slide over his skin. They don’t stay in one place too long until Harry’s shivering, his skin sensitive to every feather-light touch. Harry buries his face in Niall’s sweaty neck and bites at the muscle there, their hips jolting together.

Where they were too shy about this last night -- too cautious of ruining the moment, too clumsy with drink -- they’re brazen now. Harry feels like they’ve ran out in front of themselves, too fast, and he turns, tries to catch his breath. 

Their breathing sounds loud, Niall’s a shallow pant into Harry’s ear. Niall bucks up into him and Harry can feel where he’s hard, the press of his dick against Harry’s hip through his damp underwear. 

Around them the house is waking up. The sunless bright of the morning through the window and the gurgle of the pipes as someone runs a tap. In the alley out the back there’s shouting, the city never really having fully gone to sleep. 

It should remind Harry where they are, how they’re never alone in a huge city, always someone close by but Harry can’t think further than then length of Niall’s fingers, five of them twisting in his hair and the other gripped at his hip. 

Someone bangs on the door on their way past and Niall gasps loudly, his body going rigid against Harry’s. Niall’s fingers pinch at Harry’s skin and Harry feels the moment he comes, his hips inching forward and hands clutching at him, tugging his head down close.

When he pulls away, Harry can see his dazed expression and the droop of his eyelids. They look very blue, Niall’s mouth red from where he’s been biting his lip. “Sorry,” Niall slurs, his eyes closing in a slow blink. 

Harry thinks of asking -- asking him what, Harry’s not sure but he has the urge to _beg_ , his hips rutting against Niall’s thigh at a pace he can’t fully control now. Harry makes an involuntary noise, not really sure what he wants to say. 

Niall blinks, meets his gaze, their faces too close. Harry can smell his breath on his skin and turns away from his mouth, pressing his face into the thin pillow. Neither of them make the final move to kiss.

Niall’s hand slides down his back, his fingertips slipping into his underwear, nails across the soft skin at the crest of his buttocks and Harry comes with a grunt, so quick that he hardly has time to catch his breath. 

For a moment, they just breathe. It dawns on Harry that this could have been a mistake. They haven’t even kissed yet -- Niall’s still a friend-of-a-friend that he met in the Gaslight a few days ago. Niall has a very real family on the other side of the paper thin door. 

Just because Harry’s done this with boys before doesn’t mean that Niall has. 

“I’ll show you where the shower is,” Niall whispers, his voice so, so close. Harry shudders against him, every bone in his body grinding together to send shocks over his skin. Niall’s fingers slowly slip out of his underwear, neither of them mentioning it. 

Harry closes his eyes, prepares himself for the possibility that Niall’s going to want to pretend this never happened. They lie there for a moment, Harry breathing in the smell of Niall on his pillow, cataloguing the soft warmth of his thin sheets compared to the draught in the room and tucking it away, deep down where his insides are still warm and fizzing. 

As Niall stands, Harry can’t help but take a peek at the thin line of his body, his skinny legs, the weight of his dick in his underwear. He pulls on a shirt, the neckline gaping a bit so Harry can still see red mark of his teeth and then he’s kicking the door open, eyes on Harry one last time before turning away.

“I’m up!” he yells into the belly of the house, leaving his bedroom door ajar behind him. If there was anyone still asleep, they aren’t now. 

Harry gasps, rolls over to look at the watermarked ceiling. 

The bathroom has no lock on the door -- just sing, Niall advises helpfully -- and there’s just about enough hot water for the both of them. Harry averts his eyes when Niall comes back with wet hair and damp, pink skin and pretends not to be affronted in his dirty pants as he shuffles to use the bathroom after him. 

He tries not to take his time but he can’t help it once he’s under the spray. He washes his hair twice, the soap running down the back of his neck and under his chin. He presses his face to the water, not minding the wavering water pressure until the water has run so cool that he can’t stand it any longer. 

Niall’s left him a pile of folded clothing while he’s been under the spray -- a soft flannel shirt and a pair of trousers that are an inch too short. Harry allows himself two minutes of absolute embarrassment that Niall is going to wash his clothing and then lets it give way to the relief to have something that doesn’t reek of sweat and gin. 

“So, Coney Island?” Harry says when he enters Niall’s room again. Niall’s stooped over, pulling on his shoes and he throws his head up to look at him as he laughs. He looks clean and bright and Harry does his best not to lunge for his mouth. 

He’s regretting not taking the chance to kiss him. He isn’t sure how many he’ll have. 

“Looks good on you,” Niall says, nodding to the shirt that Harry’s borrowed. Harry bites his lip on his smile and Niall only grins wider. “I was thinking, it would look even better under your coat.”

Harry lets out a sarcastic gasp. “Wow, a trip to the Gaslight. What an adventure!” 

Niall snorts, standing up. He comes to stand in front of him and Harry can smell the mint of his toothpaste. “Couldn’t let you suffer in this cold snap. But please, be my guest.”

“The Gaslight it is.”

*

It’s freezing outside, the morning sun hardly making a break through a bank of wintery clouds. There’s that crispness to it that reminds Harry of his childhood, of snow and sledding but there’s none of that on the dirty street as the slush melts. Niall tucks his ears under a woollen hat but Harry can only dip his head into his borrowed scarf against the windchill. 

They had eaten a quick breakfast of milky coffee and jam toast in the kitchen, Harry keeping his head down to stop blushing. Niall’s extended family were in and out, briefly saying hello and talking over each other. None of them seemed bothered at all that Harry was sitting in someone’s seat and dressed in nothing but Niall’s clothes. 

Sam, however, isn’t as happy to see them. But that might be because they’ve technically broken in to the bar. 

“I used to know a lad,” Niall said vaguely as Harry hoisted him up to grab hold of the ladder of the fire escape, his bare hands on the frozen metal rung. Harry worried that his skin would stick but Niall had done a rather artful swing and propped one of the windows open wide enough for the two of them to shimmy through. It’s times like these that Harry appreciates the ramshackle way that most of New York has been built, all stacked on top of each other, buildings squeezed into the crevices of the street that had stood before. 

The fire escape shakes as Harry jumps up too, his hands catching on the cold steel but Niall swings his hand out again and manages to haul Harry over.

“And he taught you breaking and entering?” Harry asks, slightly breathlessly, the old frame digging into his stomach as he tries not to fall and break his neck. Adrenaline courses through him and Niall only adds to it, laughing, his face bright. 

“And he taught me an awful lot more.”

Harry glances up, his stomach twisting at the implication in Niall’s husky tone. Niall’s grinning and he has the audacity to fucking _wink_ before he gracefully drops down off the window ledge into the bar like he’s a fucking cat. 

“Who’s there?” comes a shout, Sam coming round the corner with a broom in his hand. “I’m armed!” Harry wobbles for a moment before he comes clattering down behind Niall. Stools and tiny tables scatter in his wake, one of the little candle lanterns on a table dropping to the floor with a loud crash. 

It’s dark, all the lights off still and the entire place smells like stale pond water without the crush of an audience to distract from it. 

Sam swings, another lantern smashing off the edge of a table.

“It’s us!” Niall cries, as if in the chaos of the moment, Sam would recognise him just by voice alone. There must be twenty Irish brogues trying to get a spot on the stage at any given moment. 

Harry’s stomach flips and he dodges the bat again. They stagger, Harry’s numb fingers coming up to find Niall in the darkness.

“What the fuck do you want?” Sam calls. “I’ll call the police. We’ve no money!”

“Just wanting to pick up a coat,” Niall says. He rights himself, hands up as if surrendering and offering a prize winning smile. Harry can just make it out in the chunk of light that’s coming through the open doorway. He doesn’t know how Niall thinks he can get away with it. They _have_ broken in. 

Sam’s shoulders fall and he rolls his eyes, the broomstick falling to the floor. “I’ll have you --” he says, lunging for Niall instead. 

Niall skates out from his grip, shouldering roughly into Harry. The three of them stumble, Harry sprawling across a table to stop from falling straight onto the tiled floor. Niall rolls against his side, his breathing coming out half-laughing, half-laboured as he struggles to stay upright. 

“Get up,” Sam snaps, stalking out of the bar. “And fuck off.”

“Wait,” Niall calls, scrambling after him. “Just need a coat. It’s of the utmost importance --”

The adrenaline burns off quickly. Harry aches when he pulls himself up, feeling a bit battered. He can hear Niall’s voice in the foyer as he pleads with Sam, both of them bickering. Harry wonders how well he knows Sam, how often he’s in here that Harry’s somehow missed him before now, missed how they seem to be at least friendly. 

Harry decides to push his luck. “Hey, Sam, what do you say you gimme a slot the next time Dylan’s in--”

“Not a chance,” Sam says resolutely, reaching into the cloakroom for Harry’s coat. His expression is steely. “You get a spot like everyone else does. By paying your dues.”

“What does that even _mean_?” Harry asks Niall, turning on him. Niall seems to be able to charm his way onto the bill with relative ease whilst Harry’s been waiting for nearly a year to get even a lunchtime spot. 

Niall snorts. “Like Old Ruthie, you mean, Sam?”

Harry grins. “She pay her dues? All night --?”

\--“every night,” Niall finishes. Harry hates him a little bit for looking so innocent even when he sends his heart racing. 

Sam turns on them, shoving Harry’s coat into Niall’s chest. Harry has to take a step back with the force of it, his hand going up to steady Niall. “Out you get.”

Niall’s grin turns into a loud cackle. It seems to take up all the room in the hallway and he doesn’t seem to care that he’s half propped up against Harry’s chest. “You dirty dog, Sam. Who knew you had it in you?”

“I can very easily take your name off the list, Horan.”

Harry grabs at Niall’s elbow, eager to leave before they both have to beg for a spot. 

On the street, Niall helps Harry into his coat, grinning at him when they press close. He runs his fingertips over the back of Harry’s neck, making him shiver until he’s finally got another layer on. 

“Perfect,” Niall says, brushing his hands over the wrinkled lapels. “Worth the wait?”

Harry grins at him, sways closer until he can feel the heat of his breath and Niall is forced to step back, his cheeks and nose pink. 

“Definitely worth it,” Harry says fishing into the pockets. There’s a little hole in the left hand pocket and if he wiggles his finger in just right, he can reach the key in the lining. Niall raises an eyebrow when Harry produces it, blowing into his fist to keep his hands warm. 

“Fancy retrieving all my belongings today?”

Niall laughs, stepping forward. Harry reaches out and grabs him by the lapel. Niall’s eyes widen but he doesn’t back down, his mouth softening into a smile. “Very forgetful aren’t you?”

“Best keep you close then,” Harry says, feeling bold. “Wouldn’t like to lose you.”

Niall cackles, finally twisting out of his grip and setting off up the street. 

*

Ben’s house is mercifully empty. Niall doesn’t say anything as they step over the threshold, his eyes dancing over the ornate decorations and how everything has a place. It’s definitely a step up from any other place Harry sleeps, his mother’s place included. Harry nearly feels embarrassed at the ostentatiousness. 

“This is nice,” Niall finally says as Harry shuts the door and ushers him down the hall. He kicks off his shoes out of habit and they must’ve had the heating on that morning so he doesn’t need the benefit of his coat. At the mouth of the living room, Niall does the same. 

“Yeah,” Harry shrugs, moving through the living room and into the hallway at the back of the apartment. There’s a cupboard where Meredith keeps all the spare bedding and towels and Harry normally put all his stuff on the bottom shelf when he stayed for a few days. He kneels down, peers in as far as the cupboard goes and sighs when the wooden slats of the shelf stretch out empty. 

When he stands up again, Niall’s over by the cabinet glancing over the row of framed photographs. 

“Ben works in television,” Harry explains, coming to stand by Niall. Niall runs his index finger over the framed picture of Ben standing under setlights, his tie slightly undone and a glass of something in his hand. There’s a few of the rest of the crew standing by his side but Ben is upfront and centre. 

“Is this him?!” Niall nearly yelps, the tip of his finger bouncing off the glass. 

“No,” Harry deadpans, stepping out of range of Niall’s elbow. “That’s Ed Sullivan.”

Niall groans, glancing up in time for Harry to flash him a smile. Harry moves onto his next hiding spot in search for his guitar -- the dead space behind the sofa pushed into the corner.

“Shouldn’t have fell out with him until you got a spot on the show,” Niall comments, collapsing down onto the sofa. “I mean think of the publicity if you got even thirty seconds.” 

Harry brushes it off but it still stings -- he didn’t _intentionally_ fuck it up with the Winstons. And actually, missing out on his chance to be on the Ed Sullivan Show is miniscule compared to the hole in his stomach when he thinks of never being able to stay with Ben and Mer again.

Niall reaches for him when Harry emerges around the arm of the sofa, his fingers brushing over his wrist. Harry lets out a long sigh, his gaze dragging over the stylish bookcase that lines one side of the living room. His guitar case is too bulky to fit in any of the nooks.

“It’s not here,” Harry huffs, twenty minutes later when it feels like he’s torn the whole house apart. 

Niall looks up from the sofa. He’s been sprawled completely across it, his shirt riding up his stomach as he reads one of Meredith’s battered novels. Something about the image jars in Harry’s head, not expecting to see him here in this living room. He used to sit on this floor, his back against that cushion, Meredith’s fingers in his hair as she read. Niall’s from another world, looks misplaced here, all battered and scruff where the sofa is plush blue velvet. 

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, maybe Harry doesn’t want Niall here in this world, doesn’t want to be himself. 

When there’s a roof over your head and someone making you dinner, it’s easy to realign what it is you really want. When there’s people telling you they love you, it’s easy to believe them. 

“It has to be. You wouldn’t have lost it.” Niall says, dragging Harry from his thoughts. 

Harry bites his lip to stop pouting. He _knows_ that.

Niall gives him a pitying look. “Come on,” Niall says, getting to his feet. “You’ll think better on a full stomach.”

Harry snorts, rolling round so he isn’t putting so much pressure on his knees. “We can’t leave and come back.”

“Who said anything about leaving?” Niall asks, making his way to the kitchen. 

“Niall,” Harry whines. “We can’t --”

Niall already had his head in the fridge by the time Harry gets to his feet and he can feel his resolve wavering. They shouldn’t do this -- either Ben or Meredith could be back any minute -- but Niall’s holding a bowl of homemade potato salad out behind him for Harry to take and it looks like they’re doing it whether Harry says so or not. 

They settle at the table and it all feels very domestic for a moment. Niall divides salad between two plates, finds bread and cold cuts. Harry directs him around the kitchen telling him where to get the big knife and where the mustard is. 

“We shouldn’t,” Harry says as Niall tugs a bottle of wine from the fancy rack in the corner. It has a yellowed label and is probably worth more than Harry and Niall have between them. 

“We shouldn’t,” Niall agrees and the smile on his face makes something giddy bubble up inside Harry’s belly as he reaches for a corkscrew. 

It tastes like heaven, Niall offering him the bottle first. 

“There are glasses,” Harry interjects but Niall just tips the bottom of the bottle with a finger so it slides where Harry has it resting against his lip. Niall catches his eyes and Harry hadn’t really realised how close they were standing, Niall right up next to where Harry’s sitting on one of the chairs squeezed around a fancy glass dining table. 

Harry tips his head back, the hair on the crown of his head skimming the embossed wallpaper and lets Niall tip the wine into his mouth. 

“Don’t spill,” Niall says, the laughter nearly gone from his voice but leaving a deep, warm mirth behind. 

It tastes buttery smooth and with a depth far more expensive than any Harry’s really used to. He tries to swallow quick enough but some spills out of his mouth, Niall’s free hand lifting to cup at his chin. 

“Ah, ah,” he says, his voice hardly a whisper and Harry closes his eyes, swallows the last of the wine. Harry lifts his other hand as he lowers the bottle, fingers wrapping around Niall’s wrist. 

His skin is roaring hot, like he’s radiating sun burn. When he opens his eyes, Niall’s grin is back, plastered over where his eyes have gone dark. “Leave some for me,” Niall says, his voice just as quiet. 

Harry bites his lip, tastes the wine on it, longing for Niall to lick the rest off his skin.

Niall’s eyes flutter as he draws back, something that Harry wasn’t meant to see.

“We should eat,” he says, roughly as he pulls away but Niall’s gaze never strays from Harry’s face.

They tuck in in muted silence, Harry hungrier than he should for having breakfast this morning. It’s always a worry about where he’s going to get his next meal so muscle memory has him wolfing it down, eyes on Niall’s across the painted table runner. 

Harry reaches for the bottle and finds Niall’s hand there too. Their fingers brush, Harry hearing the soft whoosh of noise that Niall makes somewhere behind his nose. They tangle, hooking awkwardly together and Harry lets them fall to the table so it’s not as much strain on his arm. 

Across the table, Niall lifts his fork with his free hand to finish his lunch. 

“Feel like you’re wooing me,” Niall admits.

“You wanted lunch,” Harry reminds him. Niall ducks his head, his face pinking up. Harry squeezes his fingers. “I think I’m the one being wined and dined.”

Niall snorts and looks away, blush rising. Harry loves it, wants to chase the fluttery feeling in his stomach at the sight. 

Harry thinks that this is edging close to perfect -- Niall in front of him, good food and wine at his fingertips. A warm, sated feeling in his belly and his toes not frozen in waterlogged boots.

It can only last for a moment though because the door to the apartment slams shut. Niall’s fingers twitch against Harry’s palm before he breaks away, his hand sliding away into his lap as if he had been burned. 

“Who --?” Niall whispers, his head whipping to look out into the hallway. The illusion’s ruined -- this isn’t their house, it isn’t their food on the table. It can’t be their domesticated scene.

“Oh, fuck,” Harry cringes, his stomach turning in on itself. He hopes it’s Meredith, he thinks he could explain it better to her. Maybe she’d let him off easier at least, she could never stay mad at him for long. She always had some source of sympathy inside reserved for Harry that didn’t make him feel like shit. 

But of course, it’s not. 

It’s Ben who rounds the corner and stops short in the doorway, staring between the two of them. Harry feels his stomach drop, the wine curdling. 

“What the fuck --” he says quietly, his eyes trailing over the remains of lunch before his stare stops short at Harry. “Harry. Get the fuck out.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry --” Harry says, bouncing up from the table. He hasn’t seen him since the Argument. Harry walks towards him, hands up as if he’ll bolt. He has a million things he should say to him but he can’t seem to get his mouth to work properly, his brain tripping over itself to think of something. “Ben --”

Ben silences him with a look. “I really don’t think you should be here, H.”

Harry feels his eyes start to sting. To his left, Niall shrinks back into the cupboard as if to disappear and Harry isn’t sure if that’s better or not. Harry doesn’t want him here at all, the two worlds mixing again in a way that doesn’t sit right. “I don’t know how many times I can apologise.”

It comes out rawer than he means, his voice rough. Niall makes a soft noise.

Ben’s expression goes steely. “Well sorry isn’t really going to work here, now is it?”

Harry’s throat is too tight to say anything. He can’t think of anything except another apology anyway. His shoulders slump and Ben ignores him, his eyes going over his shoulder to where Niall is very quietly trying to disappear under the table.

“You should just go,” Ben repeats, his eyes drawing back to Harry. “Meredith will be back any minute.”

“How is she?” Harry asks. He can’t help himself, he has to know. 

Ben stiffens. He has things in his hands, fingers clamped tight around post and paperwork, and he goes over to the counter to drop them down. 

It feels so familiar and Harry’s heart pangs for the cosy evenings they used to have, the three of them listening to the record player and talking their day over. Ben would come in from work, his coat over the armchair, his keys into the bowl on the coffee table. He’d watch as Harry helped Mer with the dinner and laugh at something that had happened at the studio. They’d eat with their plates on their knees, elbows knocking together and beg Harry to play something after. Harry would kiss each of them goodnight, long and lingering in the living room, Meredith’s fingertips against his jaw and Ben’s big at his hip. 

Ben heaves a sigh when Harry doesn’t budge. He goes to the bureau by the window and rummages around in a drawer for a moment before coming back to Harry with a package. It takes about a minute but the time seems to stretch out infinitely, the seconds ticking slowly by as Harry stares at the envelope in Ben’s hand and realises what it is. 

“I --” Harry flounders, his chest tightening like a vice. 

Ben glances up at him, finally something softer in his expression. “Take it.”

He presses it into Harry’s palm, his fingers curling around Harry’s until he has it in his fist and then he’s stepping back quickly, his arms going across his chest. 

Harry feels sick. It’s the same envelope that he gave Meredith three weeks ago when all this mess started. The same gnarled brown envelope, a little worn down one crease, his sloppy handwriting across it.

“You didn’t use it.” 

Ben doesn’t answer. Harry’s heart is beating very fast. 

“You didn’t use it because you paid yourself,” Harry asks, quickly. “Or you didn’t _use_ it?”

Ben turns his head and looks away. It’s all the answer he needs. 

Harry gasps, the fingers going lax. 

“Harry?” Niall asks from behind him when he lets the envelope fall. Harry stares at the money spilling out at his feet, too stunned to say anything. 

Niall clears his throat, his gaze swinging from Harry to Ben. After a beat, he asks, “where’s his guitar?”

Ben’s expression sinks with more guilt. Harry feels like this is all happening to someone else. “It’s down at Bishops.”

Niall makes an outraged noise. “You pawned it?”

Ben heaves a sigh, his eyes turning on Niall. It’s two worlds colliding. “Okay, I think it’s time for you two to go.”

Harry finally feels a prick behind his eyes. He sniffs, kneeling down to gather the money but his fingers won’t really work and he fumbles with it, spilling the notes again. 

“Waterworks won’t work this time,” Ben murmurs. Through blurred eyes, Harry sees his familiar feet disappear.

“You’re a dickhead,” Harry manages but it comes out choked. It’s the strongest thing he can think to say. 

He feels Niall reach down to help him and Harry sinks back onto his ankles.

“I was only trying to do what was right,” Harry says miserably. Niall looks away, fixing the crumpled and wrinkled notes into the old envelope and pressing it into Harry’s hand again. The only reason Harry can get to his feet is because Niall drags him up. 

Ben shrugs, his arms defensively across his chest again. “You need to go before she’s back,” Ben says with the audacity to sound guilty about it. 

Harry gasps another breath, trying to quell the building tears. He has a sudden deep, empty, longing to see her. To see what she looks like. If she already looks --

“I’ll help you,” he says, mindlessly. Niall’s fingers slip on his elbow and Ben’s face shuts down, his lips pressed tight together. Harry can see where he’s fighting not to say anything. “I can help you-- I can look after --”

Harry gasps, his chest tightening like a vice. If it’s his -- Niall steers him away. 

“Take care, H,” Ben calls as they stumble towards the door and Harry goes through the motions of pulling on his shoes again, his damp coat. 

Niall’s hand tightens on Harry’s arm once they’re at the threshold. “Get fucked!”

They don’t speak until they’re nearly half a block away and Harry still can’t quite seem to get his limbs to work.

“Look,” Niall says, looking away as Harry tries to pull himself together. It’s not really working, Harry can feel wet at his chin. “I don’t know what the fuck you’ve done --” his expression says otherwise --”but it’s not the end of the world, okay?”

Harry sniffs again, words lodging thickly in his throat. He didn’t do anything _wrong_. He tried to fix it. 

_Just like she asked._

Harry sobs, lifting his cold fingers to press against his mouth. 

Niall barrells down the street and Harry does his best to just keep up with him, his feet only matching Niall’s pace because of the fingers still clamped around the inside of his elbow. 

When he sees the sign, his heart squeezes and he can feel the hesitation radiating off Niall as their pace slows the closer they are to the window. 

“That asshole,” Harry says vehemently once they’ve stopped and he sees his very own, only slightly scratched up thank-you-very-much, Sovereign in the window. “I can’t believe he did this. He knows how much --”

Harry’s voice catches. How much it meant to him, knew who gave it to him. It was his one tangible link to home, Robin stooped over beside him as he taught him where to put his fingers. 

Harry stares through the sad reflection of his face in the window at the shine of the guitar and presses his forehead against the cold glass, his stomach feeling hollow as he glances at the price ticket pressed against the base. 

“ _Asshole,_ ” Harry growls, his hand squeezing around the envelope of money. It would barely cover it. Harry’s already spent the money again three ways over. Somewhere to stay, something to eat. 

Niall pats at his shoulder, gives him a reassuring squeeze. “It’s alright, now. Come on.”

“What am I going to do?” Harry asks despairingly. “I can’t get my guitar because I haven’t got enough-- I can’t get any money without the guitar, it’s my livelihood! It’s been three weeks --” he cuts off, his voice wavering too much to continue. 

“We’re going to get it back, okay?” Niall asks, meeting his eye suddenly. He looks so determined that Harry believes him, the air leaving his lungs quickly. His throat hurts from trying to stop himself from crying. Harry swallows and reaches for him. Niall looks down at the hand wrapping in the lapel of his coat and then up again, his mouth opening in question just a second before Harry kisses him. 

They shouldn’t be doing this on the street, their first kiss shouldn’t be so fucking sad but Harry doesn’t seem to have it in him to really care. The genuine concern in Niall’s tone seems to have loosened something inside Harry and he can’t stop himself from trying to deepen the kiss, wishing they had done this ages ago. This morning or in the Gaslight or weeks and months ago when they first met. 

Niall kisses him back hesitantly before he’s sliding closer, his tongue licking across Harry’s bottom lip. 

It’s breathtaking, Harry gasping into his mouth as he clutches at him, his hands coming up to feel at the cold skin of Niall’s face, the thump of his pulse on his neck. 

All the tension that’s been building through the day drains through Harry into Niall, his numb hands pulling him closer. It’s too hard to stop now they’ve started, Niall clutching at him, Harry sinking into it. 

They sway on the street, people brushing past them, the dusk descending in a bitterly cold wind. 

Niall’s thumb swipes over his cheek, presses into the crease of Harry’s closed eye and comes away wet. Harry opens his mouth, gasping into Niall’s as they shift. Harry blinks, sees Niall’s face swim they’re pressed that close before Niall’s pulling him into a tight hug, their bodies jostling from the people walking past.

Harry clings on.

**iv**

He manages all of three-and-a-half nights on Gemma’s sofa before it gets too much. Like cat and mouse, they circled each other over mealtimes, in the scramble of the morning and tense, sticky air just before bed. 

It had been a last resort, Matt getting tired of him and Nick before that. 

With a fierce throb of protectiveness, he had awkwardly met her new boyfriend and she had overheard the tail end of a long conversation with Niall on the hallway phone and yet they still had little to talk about that didn’t end in bickering and snark.

His mother always said they were too much alike. Harry stubbornly thinks she couldn’t have been more wrong. 

In the soft morning light, he tramps through slush and the bitterly cold morning air. He had lay awake all night, listening to them fuck in the other room and feeling out of sorts. He couldn’t mope on his sister’s sofa all day -- it wouldn’t get his guitar back, it wouldn’t fix it with Meredith. 

His guitar has been in the window of Bishops for nearly nine days now -- Harry’s been going back to check -- and breaking his heart, his resolve, his soul.

Harry had left it until the very last moment, soaking in the warm comfort of their mother’s old blanket on the sofa, the familiar soap in the bathroom before he had slid on his coat and escaped into the cold. Gemma would be glad to see him gone. (He drank the last of her milk.)

It takes him a while to get across town in the morning crush and his feet ache with cold by the time he gets there but to his relief, Niall’s under the arch, tucked up tight in his coat. 

“You look cosy,” Harry says, approaching him quickly. 

Niall turns his head and grins. “Protecting the goods,” he says as he opens his coat, revealing two cups of coffee tucked under his arm. 

“A god amongst men,” Harry compliments him, gratefully taking one of the cups. The warmth seeps into Harry’s palms and for a sharp moment, Harry loves him. 

Niall grins, the apples of his cheeks pink, and leads them towards a bench, dragging his guitar case with him. There’s a few people at the other side of the water but it’s quiet, too early or too cold for a crowd.

“Well,” Niall says, scratching his chin. He’s got a bit of fuzz growing in and Harry wonders if he’s growing it intentionally. It doesn’t look like anything much but he likes it. “Thought we could work on some of those songs.”

He flips open his guitar case, the toe of his boot nudging it an inch towards Harry, the lid of the case scraping against the pavement. Harry takes a drink of the coffee to bide him some time. 

“You play,” Harry says, toeing the case back towards Niall. 

Niall gives him a funny look, half amused. “Superstitious?”

Harry laughs, ducking his head so he doesn’t have to look at Niall and admit that maybe, yeah, he is a little superstitious. He doesn’t want to pick up Niall’s guitar only to have to give it back, his fingers fitting across unfamiliar strings. Harry pines for his guitar for a sharp moment, the knowledge that it’s up in the pawn shop window still visceral.

“What are you going to sing at the Gaslight?”

Niall shrugs, looking bashful. Harry likes flicking the heat back onto him. It takes the edge off. Makes him take his turn at biding time drinking his coffee, the wind making his face pink. “Not sure. I have a few songs but can’t get them quite right.”

“Wanna give them a go?” Harry asks, his toe nudging the guitar case again. “C’mon, let’s hear ‘em.”

Niall snorts, his face going pinker. 

It takes him a moment before he’s settled with a guitar over his knee. Harry marvels at how at ease he looks, tamps down the jealousy of having his guitar with him, within arms reach rather than up in the widow in a fucking pawn shop. 

Niall gives him a smile and Harry forces himself to listen, to turn his attention to Niall. That was the point of meeting him after all. He was getting itchy at Gemma’s, all that space and silence and nothing to do. She has an old upright, something she squirrelled out of their mother’s house when their mother wasn’t looking. 

Robin would play it when Harry was younger, filling the whole house with song. Harry’s throat burns at the sudden memory and he blinks, turning back to Niall. 

“ _Lay, lady, lay,_ ” Niall croons and Harry laughs, lets go of all the dark thoughts catching in his chest to listen to Niall joke with his guitar. He strums a few more chords but doesn’t make a serious go of it. “ _Lie across my big brass bed._ ”

He works his way through the song, just picking out the chords with his fingers, his eyes on Harry across the bench. He knows all the words already and Harry joins in for the line “ _I long to see you in the morning light, I long to reach for you in the night_ ” and Niall’s smile broadens, his fingers working up the fret. 

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you properly sing,” Niall says, his fingers still strumming the guitar but he’s abandoned the song. Harry feels his face flush, wonders why he’s feeling so nervous about that. He nearly doesn’t believe him, Harry isn’t normally shy when it comes to belting out a song at a party. Niall smiles again, catching where Harry’s face has gone pink. “It’s nice,” he assures. “I like the harmonies.”

Harry laughs, scrubs his hand through his hair. It’s clean for once and it goes static with the cuff of his jumper pulled down over his hand to fight the cold. It’s not as long as he usually keeps it, can’t hide behind it as Niall stares at him. 

“I’m serious,” Niall says, cocking his head to the side. A bit of his hair droops down where it’s all fluffed up at the top of his head. “Think they work really well.”

“I’m used to it,” Harry replies, frowning at the way Niall raises his eyebrows. “I always did the harmony when I was younger.”

Harry thinks of that upright again, him and Gemma fighting for the high note. 

“Aw,” Niall coos which only makes Harry blush again. “What I would do to see that.”

Harry laughs him off. “I need a gig before that happens.”

Niall snorts, his hand plucking out a melody again. It’s like his hand moves on its own accord, with no rhyme or reason, no urgency. It blends together seamlessly as he riffs off and Harry recognises some of it faintly, feels lonely without the rest of the instruments.

For a brief moment, Harry wonders what it would sound like if he could join in -- a guitar, his harmonica. He hums instead, Niall’s eyes lighting up and they segue easily into something that Harry always hears on the Jukebox in Joe’s, Harry matching his voice to Niall’s and letting him take the lead. 

“ _I think I’m gonna be sad, I think it’s today._ ”

A passer-by throws a coin into the lid of Niall’s guitar case and Harry swings his eyes to catch Niall’s delighted expression, his face open in laughter. He doesn’t stop singing, just grins at Harry harder, his mouth wide around the words as he keeps going, “ _she oughta think twice, she oughta do right by me_.”

Harry grins up at him and is distracted from the corner of his eye, seeing Bressie lope towards them from across the park. He’s bundled up in a big coat but Harry could spot him a mile away. 

“Bres,” Niall greets him, his fingers pausing on the strings. 

Bressie glances between them before grinning down at Niall. “I’ve a job for you. Someone cancelled last minute and they need someone down at the studio. It’s yours if you want it.”

“Shit,” Niall says, scrambling up onto his feet. He nearly falls over, Bressie and Harry reaching for him at the same time to steady him. Niall yelps, sliding his guitar recklessly into the case, the coin rattling against wood. “We better go. Fuck, traffic will be mad.”

“Come on,” Bressie urges him. “They’ll give away our slot.”

Harry hasn’t the foggiest what’s going on, he doesn’t even know what Bressie does for a living. Guiltily, he thought maybe all he did was play on a Sunday in Niall’s uncle’s pub but Harry sees the instrument case over his shoulder. 

For a hot second, Harry thinks he’s going to leave without saying goodbye but Niall turns once he’s got his guitar tucked away, squinting in the winter sunshine. He’s gone pink -- he has been all morning, Harry supposes -- but Harry can see the excitement alight in his eyes.

“I’ll see you later,” Niall promises, leaning in for a quick hug. Harry doesn’t expect it, his hands gripping Niall at his bicep, thumb pressed against muscle but Niall’s already pulling away. Bressie’s waiting impatiently a few feet away from them and as soon as Niall turns towards him, they’re off, setting a ferocious pace across the park. 

Harry watches them go, his coffee hardly cold in his hand.

*

Zayn answers the door with a bleary look and a cigarette already hanging out of his mouth, as if it had been muscle memory to lift it after he woke.

“Party’s over,” Zayn tells him, the cigarette wobbling. If Harry stares at his mouth, he can see the thin line of his lip where it’s stuck to the paper.

“I was wondering what you were doing today,” Harry says, dragging his eyes away and shoving himself under Zayn’s arm and into the relative warmth of the hallway. It smells of damp and the rain but at least it’s not got a windchill. 

Harry had stayed in the park for as long as he could muster but without anything to do with his hands, it felt a bit redundant to stay on. He had tried to find Louis but by the time he had made it down as far as Zayn’s house, he decided to chance his luck. 

“Oh, do come on in,” Zayn says sarcastically, flicking the cigarette out onto the doorstep before closing the door. He’s bundled up in a warm jumper and soft looking trousers that Harry wonders if he slept in.

“Thought I could help you with --,” Harry says, stalling as he tries to rack his brain to think about what Zayn does. Zayn raises an eyebrow. --”art?” 

Zayn snorts softly, his eyes roving over Harry’s face and shivering form. “Come on,” he says, this time genuinely. 

Harry grins, feeling warm already. 

The flat is tidy -- clearly, there hadn’t been a party last night -- and there’s already something delicious wafting from the kitchen. Even this early in the morning, it looks much more home-y without the makeshift dance floor and people gyrating against the refrigerator. 

“Do you want a bowl?”

“Yes, please,” Harry answers automatically. He’s not as hungry as he could be -- Gemma fed him well last night -- but it’s ingrained in him to never turn down a meal. 

Zayn makes a soft sound that’s hard to decipher and from the corner of his eye, Harry can see him stretch to reach into the cupboard above the sink. It occurs to him belatedly that Zayn could mean to smoke up but he watches as Zayn spoons something out of the bubbling saucepan and passes it over. 

It’s something sticky with sugar and cinnamon that Harry hardly pauses to taste properly. Zayn watches him from the other side of the tiny kitchen, his face unreadable. Harry meets his gaze, swallows roughly and looks away. There’s something simmering in there underneath his faux nonchalant exterior. 

Harry doesn’t feel self-conscious exactly, just aware of Zayn’s eyes on him as he eats. He turns, looking resolutely at the selection of papers stuck onto the fridge with magnets. They need to pay their gas bill. 

Gigi must already be gone because, apart from the record playing in the depths of the apartment, the rest of the flat is silent. Harry stands with his back to the window in the kitchen, the cold seeping still through the single pane of glass but he’s beginning to thaw out, the shelter of four walls and a warm kitchen making his muscles finally relax. 

Zayn disappears to turn the record over, then rolls him a blunt and they wedge the kitchen window open again, sharp frigid air making Harry recoil for a moment before the lure of a smoke gets too much.

“What do you know about helping at art?” Zayn asks, lighting a cigarette off the end of the blunt and passing it over. He dips down, elbows on the splintering sill and Harry can see the curve of his waist, arch of his back. 

Harry thinks for a moment. “I can wash your brushes.”

Zayn looks decidedly unimpressed. Harry lifts his knuckles to his chin, strikes a pose. The blunt burns close to his cheek but Harry keeps his hand there until Zayn cracks a smile. 

They’re quiet for a moment, both of them taking a moment to smoke. 

“I’m not usually in the habit of taking in strays.”

“You’ll be more than rewarded in the afterlife,” Harry replies because Zayn doesn’t seem to be actually chastising him. 

Some of the other people he crashes with have started to actually mean their scathing remarks and it’s getting harder for Harry to laugh them off. It makes for an uncomfortable evening but Harry can’t really afford to pick and choose when to get touchy. 

Harry swallows down the dread that he’ll be thrown out again and tries to remind himself to live in the moment. Right this second, he’s inside, there’s a roof over his head. If it all fails, he can fuck off back to his sister’s. 

When he glances back up, Zayn’s mouth has turned up into a smile before it disappears as he puffs out a perfect ring of smoke. 

“What if I want my reward now?” 

Harry startles, his eyes tracing Zayn’s face, unsure if he really means it. Harry notes that he looks a bit gaunt on closer inspection, dark circles under his eyes as if he hasn’t been to sleep yet. 

There’s a moment of silence where Zayn just regards him out of the corner of his eye, his mouth curled around the filter. His fingers are yellow, a splotch of paint on his wrist.

There’s a draw there, enough to make the skin between his shoulder blades itch. Zayn’s eyes look a bit dark and Harry wonders if he’s binged on benzedrine again. It’s a bit early but it could be from the night before. 

Harry licks his lips automatically but doesn’t answer, lingering on the last few pulls before he flips it out the window. Zayn’s cigarette is burning by his knuckles, his mouth still pulled up into a faint sly smile. 

“Won’t be doing anything for a few hours,” Zayn tells him, twisting elegantly away from the window and back to the stove. Harry doesn’t know whether he means him or the art. “C’mon, bedroom’s this way.”

Harry raises an eyebrow at the suggestion and Zayn’s back to rolling his eyes, the flirtatious spark to his expression gone. “You can stare at the fucking wall for all I care but it’ll be freezing out here without the fire.”

Harry laughs softly, follows him down the hallway to Zayn’s bedroom. He’s already starting to feel floaty, the warmth rolling up from his throat until his head is light on his shoulders. He’s been in Zayn’s bedroom once before maybe, the walls covered in some old paintsplattered sheet to keep out the draught. The music is louder in here, the record player shoved into the corner that isn’t cluttered with clothes. 

“Why are you really here, Harry?” Zayn asks once they’re sprawled across the bed. “What’s going on?”

Harry lets his shoulders sink into pillows and closes his eyes. The music washes over him. It makes him itch, a dirty rhythmic guitar, the beat of quick drums spiralling into something completely bonkers with warped piano and dizzying harpsichord. It nearly gives him a sore head, his heart pumping fast and the drugs hitting his system all in a rush. 

If he was standing, he’s sure he would’ve stumbled. 

Harry closes his eyes against it, the white ceiling too wide and too blank, making him feel sea-sick. 

“Don’t think I like being alone,” Harry answers, words tumbling out of his mouth. It’s one of the reasons he hates being at Gemma’s so much, even though it’s a roof over his head that she’s nearly obligated to give him. 

She’s away all day and Harry feels choked in her apartment with its cream walls and framed pictures. It reminds him of his mother’s and everything he wasn’t allowed to touch growing up but blank enough that it’s not nostalgic or comforting. 

He clamours for her attention as soon as she comes through the door, their conversation growing taut and twisted. 

“Everything is so empty that it’s hard to find your place,” Harry mumbles, his words maybe starting to slur. “I like to know where I fit, you know? To have a purpose. To have someone looking out for you, wanting you there, missing you when you weren’t.”

“You can find someone,” Zayn mutters near his ear and Harry sighs. He _knows_ that. Finding a pair of hands and a hot mouth isn’t exactly hard for Harry. 

It’s more the _home_ aspect of it. Harry closes his eyes and thinks of the contentment of sitting in Ben and Meredith’s living room, of the quiet comfort in it. His skin itches for that sometimes, for more than just a roof over his head. It’s like being here, even though he hardly knows Zayn and Gigi from beyond nights in the Gaslight. Something calming about being where they spend their time, share their love. 

Harry sighs and closes his eyes, the warm fire at the back of Niall’s bar coming to his mind’s eye. Niall was more than at home on that stage, in front of his regular punters. The ease of his cousins and his family around him, the peace of passing jam and butter at the cold kitchen table the next morning. 

There’s smoke spiraling up from the ashtray on the windowsill. Harry stares at it groggily, blinking himself awake. He can’t really remember falling asleep but the blankets have been pulled over him and the bed is soft and warm and gloriously more comfortable than Gemma’s couch. He stretches, his bare toes wiggling into the soft sheets. 

“Morning,” Zayn says quietly, his voice rough. “Or, afternoon.”

Harry startles, jerking back so his head hits the headboard. He hears a quiet huff of a laugh and when he blinks the room into focus, Zayn’s standing near the doorway all wrapped up in a towel, his hair damp. 

“What time is’t?” Harry asks. He clears his throat, drags himself up so he can see Zayn better. 

“After four,” Zayn sighs, sinking into the chair at the bottom of the bed. 

Harry falls back into the pillows. It’s a bit stilted as Harry takes a few moments to wake up properly. “Fuck, didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he says, redundantly. 

Zayn hums, stretching across for his cigarette. As he settles back, Harry notices that he’s got a book open at his knee, the towel riding up with the way he’s sitting. 

“Drawing,” Zayn answers his unasked question, his eyes sweeping over Harry’s face and then down over his chest. 

Harry feels self-conscious for just a moment before he relaxes back against the worn headboard. “Something nice?”

Zayn hums around the filter of the cigarette and goes back to the paper in front of him. “Maybe. If he stays nice and quiet.”

Harry laughs, slumping down into the covers again. It’s chilly in the room -- unsurprisingly -- but Harry’s used to worse. It’s still warm under the blankets and he slides under them, feeling how soft they are. 

“Can’t draw you if I can’t see you,” Zayn warns. 

Harry matches his hum to Zayn’s from earlier and disappears under the covers all together. It’s warmer now he’s completely under them, his breath bouncing back and feeling humid. The pillows smell of Zayn and Gigi, all musk and perfume, smoke and hairspray. He wriggles down the bed, the sheets slipping over his back and making his undershirt ride up under his arms.

He can hear Zayn huff a laugh from outside the covers but he doesn’t make any move to stop him. Harry grins, feeling out the bottom of the bed with his feet. His toes slip out from below the blankets, curling over the edge of the mattress. Cool fingers wrap around Harry’s ankle and it makes him jump, his leg jerking in the surprisingly strong grip. 

Zayn pulls him gently down the bed, the covers bunching around his body. Harry still can’t see but he brings his other foot up, slides the sole of it clumsily along Zayn’s thigh. 

“Maybe I should just draw what I see?” Zayn says, tugging him further until all of Harry’s legs are exposed, the back of his thighs resting on the edge of the bed. The blankets slip and slide over his bare belly. He knows his trousers are riding low, the wonky button undone from where he’s twisted during the afternoon.

He’s nearly hard just from the tease, half asleep and disoriented. Everything’s heightened because he can’t see where Zayn’s touching him. Palms skim up his calves, the tug of his trousers brushing at the hair across his shin, fingers hooking behind his knees before they retreat again. Zayn grips the hem of his trouser leg, pushing it up his shin so his palm can run at the hair there before he tugs it down, the fabric at his waistband straining. 

Fingers skim over his knee, a set on the inside of his thigh. Zayn’s exploring him, mapping him out with feather light touches. Harry fights the urge to reach down and touch himself.

Harry shifts, the second button of his trousers coming undone. He lets out a breath, hears Zayn do so too. The rest of the room is completely silent, even the noise from outside the window muffled to Harry under the blankets. 

Harry reaches down, thumbing at the third button. He’s fully hard now, the bulge of his pants probably unavoidable. It’s all the signal Zayn needs, his fingers fisting in the fabric of Harry’s trousers and pulling them and his underwear down his thighs as far as his knees will allow.

Harry arches into it, Zayn’s fingers skimming over the curve of his arse, his chest nearly touching Harry’s knees. It’s exhilarating to think of Zayn being able to see and Harry not. He’s forced to imagine it, his vision completely obscured.

How Zayn’s eyes will have darkened, how his hands would look wrapped around his ankle or his knee, fingers pressed into the soft skin of his thigh, creeping up closer to his cock. Maybe -- hopefully -- Zayn’s as hard as he is, his gaze hungry. 

Harry crooks his foot to try and find out but Zayn catches his heel before he gets very far, his fingers pressing into the tender spots there that make Harry gasp. He hears the rumble of a laugh and then his foot is being dragged into Zayn’s lap properly. 

“Should draw you myself,” Zayn says, his voice sounding muffled and quiet. Fingers wrap around his heel again and then there’s the press of something cool against the middle of Harry’s sole, tickling and slightly wet as it trails up to his toes. It’s only the size of a finger but it feels much bigger, the whole base of his foot tingling. 

Harry gasps into the blankets, pulls them taut over his face. It’s pressure he can control, the roll of the sheet biting into the bridge of his nose against the way he can’t control what’s happening to his feet.

“What is that?” Harry asks. In the muzz of his brain he thinks it could be a tongue and his stomach throbs at the thought of it. 

It flicks over the ball of his foot and Harry groans, feeling the separation of bristles, the wet quickly drying and he realises that it’s a paintbrush.

Zayn drags it around his toes and up over the bridge of his foot, swirling over the delicate bones under his skin. Harry’s breathing heavy now, nearly hyperventilating with the lack of oxygen. He sucks the blanket into his mouth, feels the wool dry against his tongue. 

The swirls oscillate from sweeping brush strokes around his heel to small, ticklish intricate detailing on the thin skin of his shin and inside of his knee. Zayn moves, Harry listening to the sound of knees sliding onto the floor so he can get his paintbrush under Harry’s thigh, and up over again. 

Harry plants his other foot on the ground to steady himself. He can feel Zayn’s breath on the cooling paint, hot little puffs that tell Harry that Zayn’s feeling it too, how fucking hot it is, how maddening. 

Harry groans, his fingers twisting in the blanket. He tries to shift down, his arse sliding off the edge of the bed but it’s useless, Zayn props him up, fingers pressed into his skin but still keeping his hand away from Harry’s aching cock. 

“Beautiful,” Zayn murmurs, his mouth close to his skin as he paints shapes over the crease of Harry’s groin, zig zagging up his hip. Harry tugs on the blankets, sees a flash of bright daylight as he tries to control himself and then brings it back down to darkness. 

He has to bite at it when he feels a stripe of wet across the head of his dick and then the hot suck of a mouth all in the one, unexpected, swoop.

“Fuck,” Harry groans. Harry fights through the sheets to brush his fingers over Zayn’s forehead, to tug on his hair and bring him back, his hips easing up until they’ve got a bit of a rhythm going. 

Harry breathes damply against the blanket, his face feeling far too hot. Zayn’s mouth is a perfect pressure, his tongue wet and sure. There’s a hand on his hip to stop him rocking up too much and the other, still holding the paintbrush, is pressed messily against his thigh. 

Harry gasps, the sensation of hot and cold amplified. It feels like an age since he’s had a mouth on him and it gives him respite to all the other shite that’s been spiraling through his head at the moment -- the guitar, Ben fucking Winston, his sister and her infuriating boyfriend and their propensity to rub their sex life in Harry’s face when --

“Oh,” comes a woman’s voice, muffled from where Harry’s under the blankets. 

Zayn stills, his mouth going slack and Harry can only hear the roar of his heartbeat in his ears. Zayn’s hand on his thigh is spreading ink into the crease of Harry’s groin and Harry’s caught, his stomach somersaulting as he’s arched from the bed. 

“Don’t stop on my account.”

“Shit,” Zayn swears. Something wet trickles down Harry’s balls, making him squirm, and then Zayn’s clambering up, his hand steadying against Harry’s thigh before he’s climbing over him, leaving Harry spread at the bottom of the bed. 

Harry fights the covers off his face but the room’s empty, Zayn following Gigi out into the living room. Harry’s still breathing hard, his heart in his throat. He feels violently ill, his dick still rock hard against his belly. 

“Fuck,” Harry mutters to himself, one hand going automatically to his cock to spread the wetness down it. A slow, slick pull because what else is he fucking meant to do? 

Faintly, he hears the sound of a door slamming shut but it barely registers, his heartbeat ringing in his ears. He bites his lip, his mind going to the image of Niall’s thighs. Ah, Niall. Harry’s heart squeezes at the base of his throat, his mouth dry. Niall. Fuck. Niall.

Harry opens his eyes, catches the swirls of blue paint across his body and comes over his fist, spunk spattering over his skin like flecks of paint.

“Fucking hell,” Zayn says blankly from the door. Harry gasps, his knee coming up in a gut instinct way of protecting himself but it just pulls him onto display. Zayn’s naked, his cock half hard and flagging. He still has the paintbrush in his hand. 

There stare at each other for a moment before Zayn turns away, blue dripping onto the bare floorboards.

*

Gigi doesn’t come back. 

When Harry emerges from a hasty shower, Zayn’s sitting on the windowsill in the kitchen chain-smoking as something stews on the stove. 

“Give that a stir,” Zayn mutters and Harry does as he’s told. 

It’s nearly a mirror image of this morning except gone are the heated looks and borderline flirting and it’s replaced with a mood as icy as the air blowing through the window. 

Zayn doesn’t move from the window sill so it’s up to Harry to decide when it’s done, anxiety building in his gut as he licks the back of the spoon and stirs rice into the stew, knowing that he’s probably doing it all horribly wrong.

He should get out of there -- head back to Gemma’s if he has to and use the key under her doormat that’s for Emergencies with a capital E. This feels like an Emergency -- Zayn silent and brooding, a hole in the room where Gigi should be and Niall God knows where oblivious to it all. 

That last one is his fault, though. 

Zayn doesn’t comment on the food but his shoulders loosen and he clears the plate, which Harry takes as a positive. Harry sits at the table, his back to the kitchen door. It’s dark now so he can see his reflection in the window, his hair standing on end, his face pale. 

Zayn lights another cigarette and offers Harry one. Harry shakes his head, his throat a little tight with the smoke that’s already in the room. Zayn’s smoked so much in the last hour that it doesn’t even have time to filter properly out of the gap in the window.

“You like poetry?” Zayn asks, head cocking to the side.

Harry blinks at the sudden break into conversation and takes a moment to answer. “Is this a trick question?”

Zayn snorts, following with a mirthless laugh and stubs his cigarette out against the flaking paint on the sill. “Come for a drink.”

“What about Gigi?” 

“That’s why we need the drink.”

Harry has nothing to change into so he presumes he’ll have to do but Zayn slides into a doorway down the hall and swaps his t-shirt for a black flannel shirt that looks too soft to look so sexy. 

Zayn lights another cigarette once they’re out onto the street, this one Harry accepts just to keep warm as they head back down towards MacDougal. They keep on past the Gaslight, stopping at a doorway that Harry’s walked past a million times before but never been in through. 

It doesn’t even seem like the place is open but Zayn ducks under a low threshold and suddenly they’re in a small bar, about half the size of the Gaslight packed full with tiny, circular tables and low stools. 

Zayn heads for one near the side, the table half in shadow except for the low, pink glow of cheap, velvet lamps with a painted lightbulb. 

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Louis says in greeting, not bothering to get up to hug him. Zayn sits on the far stool, sinking into the darkness and leaving Harry to do an awkward sort-of shrug as he slides onto the stool between them. 

“Where the fuck have you been?” Harry asks because it feels like he hasn’t seen him in ages. 

Louis smiles, conspiratorial. “Missing your bedfellow?”

Zayn coughs, lifts a menu, leaving Harry to flush under Louis’s leer. Louis grins, pleased to have found his mark and snatches the leather-bound menu out of Zayn’s limp grip. 

“Where’s Niall tonight?” Louis asks, his nose to the menu. He’s not wearing his glasses and the lighting is dim enough as it is. 

“Uhm,” Zayn starts, reaching for his cigarettes again. “Not sure --”

“Helping Bressie do something,” Harry murmurs.

Across the table, Zayn snaps his mouth shut and lights another cigarette, his lighter flaring in the dark. He shrugs, not knowing who Bressie is and Harry wonders how much they know about Niall, how well they’re all friends. 

Sometimes Harry feels like he’s out of the loop, especially if he’s over the other side of town, staying for long stints at the Winston’s or holed up in Nick’s. They all run in different circles, Harry weaving in and out of associates and acquaintances’ parties, hoping he can find a hole in the wall to stay. 

Louis looks between them with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve been pretty chummy with him lately?”

It’s directed at Harry and he suddenly feels hot at his collar. Was it supposed to be a secret? Zayn regards him quietly across the table, his cigarette smouldering.

“ _He_ told me,” Louis says, eyes narrowing as he takes in the panic streaked across Harry’s face. 

Harry shrugs, deciding it better not to say anything at all. Louis smiles wanly and goes back to the menu, humming under his breath as he squints down into it. 

“A bottle of your house red,” he says, snapping the book closed when one of the waitresses come their way. 

Zayn snorts, shaking his head. “Like you were ever going to order anything else.”

“They might’ve had a sale on the Cristal,” Louis says, adopting an affected accent. It comes out nasally and acerbic and despite himself, Harry can see Zayn smile. 

Louis fills Harry a glass when the bottle comes, a dirty dusty old thing with a peeling label that looks like its been at the bottom of shelf all year long. Zayn winces at the sight of it. It tastes as bad as it looks, a sour, vinegary aftertaste that is somehow papery and dry on the tongue. Harry can’t help making a noise of disgust and Louis claps him on the back, looking cheerful at the sight. 

The poetry is woeful. Or rather, Harry stops listening half way through and forgets what she’s talking about in the first place. He manages a few minutes, lost. The monologue was supposed to be about a rabbit in a snowstorm but now they’re onto the hot, wicked serpent that Harry supposes is a metaphor for the great dick of mankind. 

Zayn’s leant forward, his elbows on his knees. It makes his spine curve, each vertebrae visible under the thin flannel of his shirt. It’s slid up his back and Harry stares at the blank canvas of the small of his back, not yet touched by any tattoos like the rest of his visible skin. He’s attentive, the slant of his cheekbones the only thing that Harry can see of his face as watches the stage in rapture. 

Harry’s not sure how he’s doing it, his head swims, unable to concentrate. Louis has turned to getting as far as he can into the claret before the lights come up. 

The wine has made him feel warm from the inside out and by the time Louis tops up his glass, he hardly minds the aftertaste. Ben and Meredith used to drink wine, fancier stuff than this he imagines because when they’d kissed him, Harry chased the taste. 

Zayn keeps an eye on him between poets, his eyes glinting as he chain smokes and sips wine. Between them, Louis tells story after story -- he’s convinced Eleanor’s brother is a spy, his little sister is trying to make a go at disco dancing, he’s thinking of driving to California if you want to come with him, oh come on, it’ll be a riot!

Harry wrangles a note from the envelope in his shoe and buys another bottle, Louis grinning at him with purple stained teeth. The second bottle makes the poetry better -- the rhyme and reason of it making sense as Harry sinks spindly glass after glass. It spins past faster at any rate, a tall stoop of a man giving leave to a young woman who spoke in limericks until Harry couldn’t breathe for laughing. 

“Today didn’t mean anything,” Zayn tells him tightly over the noise when Louis disappears to have a piss between sets. “I love Gigi.”

Harry frowns. “Then what the fuck are you doing coming onto me for?”

Zayn shrugs, crushing a capsule under the heel of his hand. “Art.”

Harry barks a laugh, can’t even muster the energy to be fucked off. He gets it. Plenty of people he knows have open relationships, casual relationships, all sorts of relationships. Harry amongst their number but Harry can’t be pulled into something only to be spat back out again. He’s done plenty of that too. 

“That’s fucking bullshit.”

“She understands,” Zayn says. “She has her fun too.”

“Didn’t seem like it to me,” Harry reminds him, fighting not to sound annoyed. 

Zayn gives him a long smile, his head tilted back as he lifts the benzedrine to his mouth. Harry watches, mesmerised as Zayn folds the paper into his mouth. No one around them even blinks. Harry snorts to himself, sometimes not even really believing that this is the life he’s living. White picket fence to here. 

“Ready to go boys?” Louis asks, his head popping into the space between Harry and Zayn. He looks gaunt in the low candle light, his eyes blown wide. Harry wonders what he’s found in the bathroom. 

“Poetry’s not done,” Zayn says but he hasn’t been paying attention to the latest guy on the stage, his glittering eyes flitting between Harry and Louis at his shoulder.

When Harry turns his head, he can see how Louis has a plan forming already, his eyes bright. 

“Thought we’d go find something more inspiring.”

Harry shakes his head, head spinning. Zayn grins and raises his eyebrows at Harry. 

“Art.”

**v**

“Wake up little Niall,” Louis sing songs and then there’s an elbow in his gut as Louis squeezes between them. “Wake up li’l Niall-y.”

“Fuck off,” Harry grunts, rolling onto his back. Louis is all elbows and knees, his voice too loud this early. 

“What are you gonna tell your mama?” Louis cries, still managing to keep in tune even though he’s messing the words. “Your papa-a?” 

Niall snorts, writhing away from him but it only makes Louis wriggle between them. 

“When I make you go --” Louis sings as he looms over Harry and then there’s a hand where Harry’s gone half hard in his sleep --”Ohhh, la, la.”

“Fuck,” Harry tries to jerk away from him but Louis’s grin is blinding when Harry manages to get his eyes open. “Louis, fuck off.”

“What’ve we got here, little H wants to join in the fun.” Louis is all hands and sour breath and Harry tries to buck him off, feeling a jolt of nausea. “Little Harry’s all woke up already. I wonder why?”

Niall’s cackles somewhere to his left and Harry hates him, wishes they would all fuck up. 

“Fuck up, Louis,” Zayn’s voice comes from somewhere, muffled under where Louis is lying up against Harry’s side and pressing him into the thin blanket that Harry had comandeered last night. 

“This do it for you?” Louis stage whispers to him, his hand giving Harry a squeeze. 

Harry finally bucks him off, scrambling to his feet. The living room is a complete mess. Louis had thrown another party last night and Harry, who’s been sleeping on his couch, had little choice but join in. 

(Not that it took much convincing.)

Louis barks out a laugh and rolls into Niall, his hand scrambling up under his shirt. Niall catches Harry’s eye, grins at him as he takes in the bulge in his underwear. 

Harry feels a hot flush. No one seems to be bothered though, as if Niall and Louis writhing around the floor together was possibly a common occurrence or, maybe they just don’t care. Harry looks away, trying to swallow down the rush of jealousy. He knows it’s not on purpose. Keeps telling himself that even as Niall lets out a yelp of laughter as Louis scrapes his teeth down Niall’s jaw. 

In the doorway, Eleanor rolls her eyes. “Any of you boys going to do anything productive today?” She doesn’t sound angry but the straight line of her mouth gives her away, she’s probably desperate to get her apartment back, hangover wearing thin.

The party is hazy in Harry’s memory, just the bright spot of Niall arriving through the door, a few bottles of wine from the bar and smelling of sawdust and wood polish. It could’ve been yesterday or the day before, all of them going through the motions of catching a few hours sleep before they would wake and start again, Liam floating in with sandwiches from the deli and Zayn arriving with more blow. They caught and lost people like an ebb and flow, Harry losing all sense of time and space as the hours were broken up into side a, side b, and the fuzz before someone finally got up to flip the record over. 

“Of course,” Louis chirps. He’s definitely still drunk, he has that gaunt look under the shiny bright overlay. “We’re going to start a band!”

Zayn scoffs from where he’s sprawled across the dirty sofa -- technically Harry’s bed. He wonders at what point him and Niall were relegated to the floor. “I’m no Everly brother.”

Harry turns in time to catch Niall’s outraged glower. “Nothing wrong with the Everly Brothers!”

“I’m going to shower,” Harry murmurs but the others are already starting to squabble amongst themselves about the merits of the Everly Brothers. Eleanor raises her eyebrow at him as he passes her in the hallway and Harry tamps down the feeling that he’s out-staying his welcome. 

The shower pressure is rubbish but Harry stands under it until his hair is soaked and his shoulders don’t feel as twisted from lying on the floor. It’s been nice staying at Louis’s except for how he had forgotten how erratic Louis can be sometimes, flitting between shouting at Lottie for staying out too late and dragging Harry away from writing to pull him down to the Wha? They would end up in another party at 3 in the morning, strung out on something that Louis had crushed straight from his palm into Harry’s mouth. 

“Hey, Sugar-baby,” Niall’s voice floats from the other side of the shower curtain. Harry yelps, twisting away from the noise and the water all at once until he nearly topples over. 

Niall snorts, reaching over to steady him. 

“Thanks,” Harry says, his head spinning. His hangover is starting to kick in, the room swaying around him. “And stop calling me that.” 

Niall laughs, ducking in for a wet kiss. Harry wishes he could pull him into the shower and everyone else on the other side of the door could fuck off for an hour. 

It’s been nice seeing so much of Niall too, catching him for lunch in the park or squeezing in a show between Niall recording with Bressie or filling in for Deo at the pub. Harry’s sock fund is getting lighter and lighter each time they skim up Bleecker, ducking in for a quick pint or a lunchtime gig at Cino’s.

Niall’s been calling him Sugar-baby since they had squeezed into a booth to listen to _Gloria_ and Bleecker Bob had introduced Harry to his new favourite record.

“Does it remind you of home?” Harry had asked him, chest pressed to Niall’s as they shared a set of headphones. The shop wasn’t busy for this early in the morning but they stayed put in the same booth anyway. 

“Wrong part of Ireland,” Niall had replied, breath smelling sweet from the pastry he had brought for breakfast. But then he smiled, listening to the violin weaving over scraping guitar. “He’s good.”

Harry had hummed _I shall drive my chariot down your streets and cry_ under his breath for days afterwards so Niall had taken to teasing him, calling him Sugar-baby when no one else was around to make the fun anything but something between him and Niall. 

“I’ll see you later,” Niall promises him, his hand on Harry’s wet chest. 

“Wait,” Harry begs, his hand wrapping around Niall’s wrist. He clambers out of the bath and Niall laughs, pressing up against him even though he’s all wet. 

“I have to go,” Niall tells him. They’re still bickering about something in the living room so Harry steals into Louis and Eleanor’s room, dragging Niall with him.

The room smells of sex already but Harry doesn’t think about it, pulling Niall down onto the bed. Niall laughs, pressing up against him until his shirt is damp. It’s one of Harry’s, washed by Niall’s sweet aunt and still smells clean. 

“I really do have to go,” Niall murmurs, his mouth on Harry’s jaw. His fingers drag along Harry’s throat, curl up under his hair by his ear. 

Harry ignores him, twisting a hand in Niall’s shirt to pull him closer. It’s nice to press up against the soft touch of clothes, Niall’s body warm where Harry’s is going cool and shivery in the frigid air of Louis’s bedroom. 

“Just ten minutes,” Harry cajoles, his mouth catching against Niall’s to pull him into a proper kiss, tongues against each other. 

Niall moans against him, his hand sliding down to wrap around Harry’s dick where he’s lying, towel twisted and forgotten below them. Harry’s dripping water into Louis’s sheets and it’s all a bit damp, Niall rolling his hip down into Harry’s thigh but Niall’s grip is tight and Harry can buck up into it, sucking Niall’s lip between his teeth. 

“Fuck,” Harry gasps as Niall’s fingers squeeze at his balls, his other hand planted by Harry’s ear, keeping his weight off him but Harry wants it, craves the feeling of being pushed down into the mattress, Niall above him, all over him. 

They’ve so rarely had the chance for this, catching moments together at parties, down darkened alleys, pressed together in toilet cubicles if they’re lucky. 

Harry’s fingers stumble over the button of Niall’s trousers and he manages to get a hand in, feels where the head of his dick is already wet and slippery pushing against the fly of his trousers. 

Niall’s knees shake and he slumps against him, his hips working forward as Harry manages to press his palm against the head of Niall’s cock, slippery against his abdomen. It’s not enough but it makes Niall’s hand stutter on Harry’s dick, his breath a quick pant at Harry’s ear. 

“Fuck,” Niall growls. “Keep like that.”

“Take them off,” Harry grunts back, his hips working up, afraid he won’t be able to stop chasing his own orgasm. 

Niall’s biting his way down Harry’s jaw when he confesses “I want to fuck you.” between kisses. Harry chokes, dragging his hips back so Niall can push one of Harry’s legs up out of the way. It brings them hip to hip better, Harry moaning when Niall aligns so Harry can grasp both of their dicks in the same grip. “Someday. I want to be somewhere where we can --” he breaks away to groan, long and low into Harry’s neck. 

Harry arches up into it, twisting his hand. “Where we can both be naked,” he breathes into Niall’s cheek, his tongue lapping where Niall’s started to sweat, catching across stubble. 

Niall huffs a laugh, his face all pink and flushed. He grinds down against Harry and they’re pressed so close that Harry can see his eyelids flutter and catch the hitch in his breath just a second before he comes all over Harry’s hand. Harry lifts his free hand to catch him, Niall’s body pressing down against him in the most welcome way and it only takes a few twists of his hand, slippery with Niall’s come, over the head of his own cock before he’s tipping over the edge too. 

They breathe in each other’s faces for a moment, Harry too hot and clammy to do anything but stare at him. He needs another shower and with a roll of his stomach, a glass of water, his head starting to pound in time with his heart as he comes down.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Louis says, barging in on them. “Have you pair no fucking shame?”

“No, it’s just Niall and Harry,” Niall murmurs, words slurring. Harry wishes they had time to go back to sleep. He wants to gather Niall up when he’s gooey like this, warm and supple, all kisses and laughter and breathy moans in his ear. 

“Christ, we get it,” Louis snipes. “You’re together now. All loved up or some shit. Just fucking find your own bed to fuck in. Could hear you from the living room.”

“If you wanted to join,” Harry jokes. “You could’ve just said.”

Niall splutters a laugh. “Niall, Harry and Louis.”

“ _Lord, I’m one_ ,” Harry intones, his heart swelling when he sees Niall get it, breath fanning over Harry’s face as he starts to laugh. “ _Lord, I’m two --_ ”

“Oh, fuck off,” Louis snaps, bending down to pick through a mess of clothes in the corner of the room. Harry clutches Niall closer. It’s obvious that Harry’s naked but Niall’s pressed over him so Louis can’t see their dicks or the come sandwiched between them. 

“Get fucked, Louis,” Niall tells him. “Like we haven’t seen enough of you slipping El a finger or two. Normally in fucking public because you have no decency.” 

Louis squawks indignantly. “I can’t wait to fuck off to California and be rid of your two arseholes!” and slams back out of the room, his voice fading as he goes to give off some more in the living room. 

“Maybe hit a nerve,” Harry murmurs, gathering Niall up close so he can go back to kissing him. “Maybe he does want some of this.” He squeezes Niall’s arse for good measure and gets a laugh in return, Harry swallowing it in another kiss. 

“Are we doing _this_?” Niall asks him, his voice half hushed when he pulls away. He’s gone pink again, flushed all down his neck. Harry could look at the change in his face all day. 

Harry squirms, curling up against Niall until they’re tangled hip to ankle. 

“Making a go of it?” Niall prods, his mouth against Harry’s temple. 

It feels like his heart could pound right out of his chest. “Yeah,” he says tentatively, catching Niall’s eye. “I think we are?”

Niall grins, presses his mouth against Harry’s. “Good, just making sure we’re on the same page.”

*

Harry leaves them at the bottom of Sullivan, Niall humming _all the leaves were brown_ to an increasingly irate Louis as they headed back over towards the Park. Eleanor had kicked them all out much to Louis’s chagrin and they were looping back to find Liam before heading for something to eat. 

Harry cuts across the road, half jogging when the lights change. It’s a rubbish afternoon, too cold to properly snow but chilly enough that the rain falls in icy-wet splotches on his cheeks. The sky is slate grey, like the clouds have descended low enough for Harry to walk through. 

Harry’s trousers soak up the sleet and he looks up to see his guitar in the window of Bishops -- a tradition he does nearly every day now. It had been hard at first, having to pass it. A reminder of how much of a cunt Ben had been but now it’s tightens his resolve, makes him push through the day with the thought of getting it back again. 

Harry stops short, his breath caught in his throat. In its place is a dusty old accordian, it’s keys worn away by dirty fingers and it has the look of something that’s seen better days. Harry doesn’t think they’d be swapped for the aesthetic. 

The bell rings above his head when Harry pushes at the door. 

“Where’s the Sovereign from the window?” Harry demands, the door slamming sharply behind him. It’s quiet in the shop, the cluttered shelves and benches making it feel warm and claustrophobic compared to the chill outside. 

A man pops his head out of the door to the back and Harry glares at him, wrenching his scarf from his face. “The Sovereign?”

“Sold it,” the man says simply, shrugging in his ugly brown cardigan. 

Harry lets out a breath. “When?” he asks, his voice tight and nearly on the verge of cracking. 

The man shrugs again, tugs nervously at his beard. Harry knows he looks like an asshole, looming across the bench. 

“Look, son,” he says, spreading a hand out palm up. “It was a good guitar, I can’t believe it lasted that long to be honest, boys coming in everyday to get any old instrument. Someone asked me about it a few days ago and sure enough, the lad came back with the money for it --”

Harry isn’t listening, his ears full of the sound of his own roaring heartbeat. Some stranger has his hands on his guitar, is probably using it right now. Dirty fingers on his strings. 

Harry bets it’s some uppity asshole who just wanted a guitar to make him look cool and he can’t even play it. It’ll sit in someone’s bedroom, dusty, broken and unused. 

“How much money have you got?” the man asks, tugging on his beard again. “I can maybe find you a Silvertone somewhere.”

“ _Fuck off_ ,” Harry says, half offended. The man rolls his eyes and disappears back into the back again and Harry steps out, bell chiming, onto the street.

The cold bites at his cheeks and he blames that for the frustrated tears that gather in his eyes. He hadn’t realised how much he had been holding out on getting it back, squirrelling non-existent money from the odd-jobs he was barely getting by on. Harry scrunches his face up, pushes his knuckles into the sore spots in the corner of his eye. 

“Harry?” 

It’s Meredith, her hair blowing across her face. She’s wearing a hat but it’s pulled back over the crown of her head so a great swathe of hair has unravelled out of it. 

Harry stops short, his stomach somersaulting. He could keep walking, just pretend not to see her but there’s a betraying part of him that’s actually desperate to talk to her. It’s because he’s upset, he tells himself, seeking out the comfort in her voice and her hands.

Harry’s honestly a bit surprised it’s taken this long to bump into one of them, considering how close they live nearby and it seemed that he couldn’t go two steps without bumping into one of them in the first place.

Words don’t really seem to come so he ends up standing staring at her, taking in every wind beaten feature of her face, the red imprint the collar of her coat is making on her neck, the water marks on her suede boots. Her hair looks duller but her face bright, pink. Nearly aglow. 

Harry’s stomach turns over again and he blinks away, too scared to look too closely at the rest of her torso. 

“Harry --” Meredith starts, taking a step forward. She was always one step ahead. Harry had often thought that when he was living under her roof. Always knowing exactly when to speak, when to step between him and Ben, when to make the right move and knowing when to leave it. 

Harry thinks of all the complicated tangles that she carefully and lovingly smoothed out. She could gauge the mood when Ben came in from work, a hand curled around Harry’s wrist to keep him with her on the sofa or the pull of fingers to get him to follow. The guide of her hand when Harry hadn’t known what to do, the whisper of an instruction. The night she melted away because she knew it was Harry’s time to talk, when it should just be him and Ben. 

Harry feels a flush over his skin and he looks up at the sky, blinking away the sudden blurriness. 

“How are you?” he asks, aiming for casual and wincing when it sounds raw and desperate. It’s the guitar, he tells himself, it’s only the guitar. 

He looks at her again, his eyes jumping automatically down to her abdomen. She pulls a face and for once Harry isn’t sure what he’s meant to take from it. She shifts her weight, rearranges the handbag over her arm and the lapel of her coat opens -- Harry’s nearly sure on purpose -- and he can catch a glimpse of the dress she’s wearing. 

It’s pale blue, the one with the funny zipper that goes right to the hem of the dress. Harry had watched the curve of her spine when she had undressed one evening, right in the middle of the living room. It’s layered over a pullover and Harry can see the svelt line of her hips under a roll of fabric before she’s folding her hands into her coat again and Harry can’t see any longer. It’s just a glimpse, doesn’t tell him anything at all. 

“Fine,” she answers, her mouth turning up. “Good, actually. Ben’s just got some good news at work and it’s good timing with the --”

Her breath catches and she doesn’t finish. Harry finds he can’t look away, his eyes roving over the myriad of expressions that flit over her face. Harry wonders if Ben told her about finding him and Niall in the house, if he told her about the guitar, the envelope of money. If she thinks that Harry just disappeared when he was told the news or if he was only doing what he was told was best. 

“Do you want to come for dinner?” Meredith asks, when she settles for squinting in the weak winter sunlight. It’s neutral, doesn’t tell him anything about what she’s thinking. Harry schools his face to match, not a peep of what he’s feeling inside registering under her gaze. 

Harry licks his cracked lips, glances at his feet. “No, I’m busy tonight,” he says, knowing full well that the invitation isn’t just for tonight. 

Meredith’s face falls and she looks strangely beautiful. “Ok,” she says softly, blinking slowly, steeling herself before smiling. “It was lovely seeing you.”

Harry swallows the sudden lump in his throat. “Thank you for everything,” he says, thinking it sounds rather like a goodbye. 

“No,” she murmurs, her hand slipping out of her coat to squeeze around his bicep before she’s moving away. “Thank you.”

*

“What’s up your arse?” Louis asks when Harry settles at one of the tables near the stage. 

Harry hardly looks at him and takes a gulp of the beer he paid for with a soggy note from his sock. His hands are wrinkly from the dishes he spent all afternoon washing.

“Niall,” Liam says, waggling his eyebrows. Harry glances at him and Liam shrugs, his eyes sliding to Louis in explanation. He wonders if Niall was still with them when they had this little gossiping session. Everyone will fucking know at this rate. 

“Someone’s bought my guitar,” Harry whinges, anger still hot on his tongue. It’s all he’s been thinking about all afternoon, that and the hot spike of nervous anticipation for Niall’s set. “I had been checking everyday and someone’s fucking bought it.”

“Oh,” Liam says, his face twisting into a funny looking grimace. It kind of looks like he’s also fighting a smile and Harry glares at him, gulping at his beer. It’s flat and Harry’s not 100% sure that Sam didn’t give him shit beer on purpose. The tables are still looking a little sparse after he and Niall broke half the candle holders. “You’ll find another one.”

“Plenty more fish in the sea,” Louis agrees, face cleaving in two as he starts to laugh. “Maybe it’s for the best. It would cause too much trouble, you and Niall fighting for fame. The next Lennon and McCartney. Star crossed lovers caught in a tangle of jealous rage as you wrote songs about each other, each more melodramatic than the last.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “I’m the melodramatic one?”

Louis pulls a face at him. 

“Maybe you could take up something else?” Liam asks, his finger on his chin as he ponders. “What about a keytar?”

“Glockenspiel?”

“Bassoon?”

“Theremin?”

“Double bass.”

“No, an Octobass!”

“Alright,” Harry gripes, although he has been meaning to take up the dulcimer. “I’m not becoming a one man band.”

“Shame,” Louis says sarcastically, trying to pinch at Harry’s cheeks. “You used to have so much ambition.”

“You could be Niall’s muse instead?” Liam suggests seriously. “Don’t need a guitar for that. I always thought you liked posing too much to be really interested in getting your hands dirty.”

“What the fuck, Liam?” Harry mutters, feeling that one right in the gut. 

They’re useless at commiserating with him. Where’s Zayn when you need him? At least he listens and looks very zen before telling you to wise the fuck up. Liam just looks unabashed or unaware of what he’s just said, Harry isn’t sure what’s worse. 

Louis barks out a laugh, looking between them. “It’s alright, they’ve got their muse, their Yoko.”

Harry’s eyes flash to Louis who grins wolfishly back at him. Louis seems to figure out everyone’s secrets.

“It’s all going to end in tears.”

“Tears?” Liam asks and looks genuinely bewildered for a moment. “Wait, which one’s Yoko?”

Louis laughs harder. “Oh, Leemo.”

Harry’s eternally grateful when the lights dim, cutting off this god-awful conversation. Niall takes to the stage and Harry focuses on him, blocking out Louis’s Cheshire grin. 

Niall’s wearing a crisp clean shirt and a nervous expression but it dims when his eyes find Harry’s. Harry gives him a quick thumbs up as he settles on the stool, his sweaty fingers on the strings of his guitar being picked up on the lone microphone. It reverberates out through the club speakers and Harry’s hit with the realisation of how big this is, how important it fucking is. It’s more than the basket, every chance to get on stage is an opportunity to push his career, to get his sound out from the back of his uncle’s pub, to go from a tune or two on a Sunday when everyone’s half-way to stocious. 

He wants this for Niall but yearns for it for himself at the same time. For a quick moment, his throat burns with jealousy -- why can he never get a fucking break -- but it melts away into pride when he looks up at Niall again, sees his fingers slide up the neck of his guitar sure as anything. 

Harry inhales, tries to ground himself and the second-hand nerves that bubble up through his gut. It’s packed tonight and Harry’s not sure, not aware of any rumours of a big name on the bill. He’s never seen Niall’s set and it dawns on him for a moment that they might all be there for him. That _he’s_ tonight’s big name. 

Niall’s shoulders rise with his own deep breath and then he’s turning his head down, light softening over his jaw as Niall stares proudly down at his guitar. 

Harry closes his eyes and listens to Niall’s voice as it fills the room. The audience is completely silent, settled, so unlike the hustle of the pub and the bustle of the street. Niall’s voice cuts across it, sounding so pure and strong and sure. Harry could listen to him forever. 

_And who will take pity in his heart  
and who will feed a starving sparrow?_

Harry listens as Niall weaves his voice up through a harmony, diverging from the original tune to put his own spin on it, hitting the note he had been wanting, practising, aiming for. Harry can feel the wind on his face as they sat by the fountain in Washington Square Park, Niall’s fingers bleeding and sore with how many times he’s gone over it. 

Harry opens his eyes, adjusts to the golden light from the shaded candles, a halo around Niall’s head. 

“ _I don't care what they say, I won't stay,_ ” Niall sings, his fingers plucking an intricate outro that melds the two songs together. “ _In a world without love._ ” 

Harry swallows, feels the weight of his stare. It settles something inside him, the turmoil he’s been feeling all afternoon as he went to the shop and ran into Meredith, the unwelcome jolt of the past catching up with him, the panic of what he’s going to do next. 

Maybe he shouldn’t worry so much, maybe it will all work out. 

Niall’s looking right at him, his mouth turned up in a smile as he rounds off the song and Harry fights not to give into the laugh bubbling up his throat as the tables beside him erupt in rapturous finger clicking. 

**vi**

“-- and then out of fucking nowhere,” Louis pauses for a breath. “A police car comes careening around the corner and clips the front of the car. Eleanor freaks the fuck out --”

“Hey!” Eleanor interrupts. 

\--”and they pull _us_ up for dangerous driving,” Louis says, ignoring her. “Us! Twenty five fucking bucks because they weren’t looking where they were going.”

“I can’t believe you know what the word careening means,” Zayn says, looking bored. 

Eleanor pouts, flicks ash into the ashtray between her and Zayn’s elbows. “I had half an ounce of MJ shoved down the front of my knickers. Excuse me for thinking we were being pulled over for just a chat.”

“Just be glad they didn’t ask you to spread your legs, then,” Louis says. 

Eleanor smirks. “That came after.”

Louis gives her a glowing smile, wraps his tongue around the straw of his milkshake. Eleanor winks at Harry, causing him to snort unattractively into his own drink. He forces himself not to look at Niall -- it’ll tip him over the edge. 

“You pair sicken me,” Zayn drawls, turning his face away but his mouth is turned up at the corner. 

Beside him, Niall finally giggles. 

They’re in a diner. It’s still grey out, the lights on the ceiling glaring against the darkened window. It’s the earliest they’ve been up in a while, Harry suspects that most of them haven’t been to bed yet if the wild look in Louis and Zayn’s eyes are anything to go by. 

Louis had left a message with a neighbour announcing that they were back already and to meet them for breakfast. Harry had woken to a knock on the door and with a sense of dread, he realised that his little sojourn house-sitting for Lou and El was over before it had really started.

Niall was curled under him, his arse pressed to Harry’s front. It had been nice to have the place to themselves. Short as it was, it was long enough for them to fully take advantage, Niall taking Harry apart slowly, only to put him back together again. Harry had felt things he’d never before, his heart swelling and becoming all encompassing with every shift of Niall’s body, every sleight of his hand, each and every kiss across his face. 

The way he had opened up for him, the hot clench of his body that had Harry yearning for more. 

By the time they had arrived at the diner, the others were already tucking into pancakes and hashbrowns, none of them any the wiser as to why they were so late. It’ll be sad to let Niall go back to the pub.

“Anyway,” Eleanor says, dragging her eyes away from Louis. Her cheeks look pinker than before, though, clearly having enjoyed their trip too. “If you get the chance, you should go. California is amazing.”

“Amazing,” Louis agrees, his eyes on Eleanor’s lips. 

They’ll fuck in the bathroom and it’ll be another place that they’ll never be able to eat in again. Harry’s sure they’ll exhaust all the cheap diners in the city at this rate. 

“You were only there two days,” Harry points out and tries not to sound too bitter about. Zayn snorts into his breakfast. “Don’t think I’d class you as experts.”

“Well,” Louis snaps, his eyes roving over him. “You’d fucking love it.”

“Just upsticks and go?” Niall asks, pushing his straw through the solid ice cream at the bottom of his glass. He looks intrigued and Harry wonders if he would do it. Niall’s already upsticks once before in his life, maybe he’s a rambler at heart. A rolling stone.

Harry isn’t sure what to make of that thought, he’d always considered himself a homebird. Even if he hasn’t quite found where that home is yet. 

Louis shrugs. “What’s keeping us here? A pipe dream of a music career, the pinnacle of which is going to be getting on stage at the Gaslight for the basket?”

“Pinnacle.” Zayn shakes his head. “Have you suddenly been enlightened since you were away?”

“You’d love it,” Louis assures him. “They have things out there that will blow your mind. You should hear it. None of this mopey shit, like proper music. Guitars _grind_ out there. They fucking rattle inside your bones.”

“And really good fucking drugs,” Eleanor chips in. “ _Fuck._ ” 

Zayn sighs, stretches his head back. “I’d get a farm. Stick me on some grassy hill somewhere. I don’t do the ocean.”

“You don’t do a lot of things,” Niall reminds him, spooning ice cream into his mouth. Harry can’t watch the white melt on his tongue. His mind flashes to Niall last night, nursing the head of his dick with his tongue. “You don’t do half of New York and yet, here you are.” 

“The sun is always shining, the girls’re loose -- ow,” Louis breaks off in a whine as Eleanor pinches his arm. “For the others,” he says, waving a hand vaguely at Zayn, Harry and Niall, who are for all intents and purposes taken. “The ones without the girlfriend. Obviously.”

Niall and Eleanor roll their eyes in unison. 

“And abandon my adoring fans?” Harry says, layering on the sarcasm. “Whatever will my groupies do?” 

“They’d follow you,” Niall assures him, his eyes sparkling. Harry laughs, edging closer to him on the bench as Louis starts into another story about their trip. It feels magnetic, like they’re tethered together now. 

Harry’s felt what it’s like to be _inside_ Niall. It’s something he’s never going to get enough of. 

Niall flushes, looks like he’s thinking the same.

“We _should_ go somewhere,” Harry says. He could mean now -- Harry wants to kiss him but he’ll have to wait until later. “Take a road someplace nice.”

“You learnt to drive in the past five minutes?” Niall asks, fighting a grin. His eyes look nearly too bright. 

Harry snorts. “If Louis can do it…”

Niall laughs, shaking his head. “Could maybe swing Coney Island.” 

“Somewhere _warm!_ ” Harry says, jolting as Niall’s freezing fingers slide along his hip and up the back of his shirt. They’ve been inside him too and Harry flushes hot, his cheeks burning. “It’s fucking minus ten.”

Niall laughs, his head tipping into Harry’s shoulder for a moment. His hair smells of Eleanor’s shampoo. “Okay, okay. In _July_ then.”

July seems like a lifetime away. Words catch in Harry’s throat at the thought of Niall planning that far ahead. Harry looks down, catches how Niall’s smiling into the wool of his scarf.

“July?”

“You heard me,” Niall murmurs, his face flushing bright. 

Harry grins, pressing ever closer. Harry fits his hand around Niall’s wrist and feels where his pulse is hammering as hard as Harry’s. 

“And we’re the ones that are sickening?” Louis asks, slurping his milk shake. 

Niall breaks away to laugh properly and the moment’s gone, Niall’s fingers tangling with Harry’s under the table.

Unsurprisingly, they are kicked out a few moments later, Louis heckling at Eleanor as she disappears into the bathroom. 

*

Harry has approximately three hours to wallow in the soft, warm fucked-out feeling of Niall basically admitting that they’re head-over-heels, write-a-song-about-it in love with each other before it all comes crashing down.

Niall gave him a lingering look before they had split at the end of Wooster, heading with Zayn to finish a job and Harry had taken his battered harmonica to hit the Park, hoping for a punter kind enough to tip an instrumental. It was the only downfall of the harmonica, that he couldn’t sing at the same time. He’d gotten enough for a late lunch, his stomach rumbling and fingers cold enough that he had to take a break from playing anyway. 

“I heard you met Gigi,” Niall says bluntly, appearing in front of him.

Harry’s heart swells at the sight of him and then plummets as he processes what Niall’s saying. He fumbles with the sandwich, greaseproof paper sliding out of his grip and he loses half of it between his feet. Niall doesn’t seem to notice, his glare still fixed on Harry’s face. 

“A while ago,” Harry says. There are other people milling about so he steps closer, tries to keep their conversation private. Everyone’s probably a friend-of-a-friend-of-Louis-the-massive-gossip somehow. “Before --”

Before _them_.

Niall doesn’t seem to care about the distinction, his scowl setting more firm on his face. “You could’ve fucking told me.”

Harry swallows the sudden tightness in his throat. “I didn’t --”

“I know you didn’t! That’s the point!”

Harry reaches for his wrist. He’s not wearing gloves so his fingers are like ice, his skin nearly blue. “I didn’t want to fuck it up. I didn’t know what to say!”

“How about --” Niall snarls, too angry to even pretend to be sarcastic. --”I’ve been fucking Zayn behind your back, here’s a pity pint to make up for it.”

“No!” Harry says, lunging after Niall as he turns on his heel and stalks off. A few of the other people gathered turn to look, always interested in any dramatics that are happening. It’s disappointing that the park is relatively quiet on a Tuesday morning and there’s no protest or impromptu jamming session to draw the attention away from them.

“It wasn’t like that!”

Niall shrugs him off and keeps walking, his gaze set firmly on the gates across the park. Harry can see the tightness of his jaw, the way he’s grinding his teeth together. His shoulders looks tense, his fingers in fists by his sides. Harry’s never really had to deal with this -- fighting in the street, feeling like his world is ending if he lets Niall get away.

“You know what Zayn’s like!” Harry says desperately. 

Niall whirls around, throwing him a scathing look. “That makes it better? Zayn might equate fucking half the Village as just doing a day’s work but I sure as fuck don’t. All you had to do was tell me.”

“Niall,” Harry begs, nearly tripping over his feet as Niall cuts through the gate and into the bustle of the street. Fuck them all, Harry doesn’t know why they’re all out in this weather, clogging up the streets and watching as Harry’s life falls apart, if they don’t have to be. “Please, let me explain --”

“Do you know how fucking mortifying it was hearing it from her, second-hand, like _we’re_ the fucking punchline of some joke --”

“Niall,” Hary tries again, his hand wrapping around Niall’s forearm and getting him to wheel back around. Niall looks devastated and Harry’s heart clenches, unsure why he’s reacting like this. “Nothing happened,” Harry pleads. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Get fucked, Harry,” Niall shouts over his shoulder, stepping out into the street and running through the traffic to the other side, stopping Harry from going after. 

*

“You’ll have to start paying rent,” Zayn says, opening the door. 

Harry peers up at him, tries to look as miserable as he feels. It’s not that hard. He’s drenched, frozen to the bone. Louis and Eleanor hadn’t answered the door and Harry had stood on their stoop for a long moment, hating the fact he was friends with them in the first place. 

His heart is too battered to try his sister, her living room cavernous and hollow empty. Too weak to attempt the Winston’s and be spat out again, half-chewed. 

It had taken more of his resolve than he would like to admit before he could head towards Zayn’s. 

“Thought there might be a party.”

Zayn rolls his eyes. “You’re pathetic.”

“I know,” Harry agrees, watching the way Zayn smiles slightly. He sort of hates Zayn too for getting him into this mess but he’s not going to hold a grudge if he lets him inside.

“Will you help me bring my art over to the park tomorrow?” Zayn asks, his eyebrow crooked.

“Anything,” Harry answers but Zayn’s already pushing the door wider to let him past.

The living room is chilly as usual, the window into the alley outside cracked. Gigi’s curled on the corner of his sofa, her hair bundled into a pile on the top of her head. She’s wearing eyeliner and it makes her look more severe when he follows Zayn in, her disapproval feeling too heavy for a moment before it lifts and she’s smiling, waving her fingers ambiably at him. 

She doesn’t look smug as she trails her eyes over him and Harry wonders what the fuck it was all for. 

He uses her shampoo in their shower, feeling more vulnerable under the drip of their faucet and the cling of the shower curtain to his shoulder. He can see the mirror from here, catching glimpses of his naked body in the spots that haven’t steamed up. 

Niall’s fingertips bruised into every crevice, under his skin. 

Zayn makes him soup in a mug and Harry grips it, his hair dripping down his neck. They watch the television in silence, one, two, three on the sofa, Harry’s eyes wide at the flicker of it. 

“Go,” Zayn tells him, his fingers gentle on his chin. Harry tips his head back, blinks at the glare of the naked bulb hanging above them. “You look dead on your feet.”

Zayn’s bed is soft. More welcome than Harry would like to admit. He burrows into the folds of the duvet and the wrinkles of the sheets. The pillows smell of nothing and everything, just softness and smoke. 

From there, tucked into the corner of the house, Harry can hear everything. The rustle of someone in the alley below, the scratch of mice in the rafters. The low murmur of Zayn and Gigi, finally broken their silence in the other room. 

It’s like a buzz in his ears, white noise in the absence of the din of a party. There’s no jazz to block out the rumbling in the back of his mind, no whiskey to give him an excuse as to why his throat is aching, nothing to explain why he’s here. 

He keeps his eyes closed when they creep into the room later, half on the edge of sleep. Zayn shushes her as they stumble blindly about, kind enough to keep the light off. 

Zayn tumbles in beside him, he can tell by the jut of his elbow, the coolness of his skin. Gigi comes next, pressing Zayn between them. They settle anything but quietly, not speaking but everything else seems amplified in the quiet of night. 

The soft hitch of breathing, the wet press of a mouth. 

She’s proving a point, Harry understands. It’s unnecessary but he lets her do it. 

Zayn groans softly, his skin heating up. There’s the rustle of sheets, the soft, wet sounds of her hand on his dick. 

Zayn rolls back when he comes, shuddering against Harry’s back. Harry can feel every roll of his hips, each jolt of it through his spine. He gasps for air, loud and brash. Gigi must kiss him again but they do nothing more, both of them rolling together to sleep. 

Harry tries to keep his breathing steady, his hand curled around the base of his dick. 

**vii**

Gigi’s mouth is painted red in the morning. She’s wearing a lace bralet so sheer that Harry can see the colour of her nipples and jeans that come up to her ribs. 

“Morning,” she says, her fingers curled around a mug. She nudges another one closer to Harry with her toes. Harry takes the cup. She’s made her peace. 

Harry considers saying something to her, stirring it all up but he finds he’s too exhausted. A shitty night’s sleep on top of how he’s already too tired and wrung out. 

It’s his own fault for getting tangled in whatever-the-fuck Zayn and her are doing. Harry wonders how many other people are ensnared in their game. Harry thinks back to Zayn telling him that it’s for his _art_ and wonders if it’s really the _hurt_ he’s after. 

“Morning,” Zayn says, shuffling into the room. His hair is damp and he glances between the two, his face unsure. Harry can see the guilt in it, the confusion in his expression but he doesn’t push it.

Harry gives him a wan smile and turns away, sipping Gigi’s coffee. Behind him, Harry can hear the clink of a cup, the murmur of a private good morning to each other. 

“Are you helping Zayn today, Harry?” Gigi asks. Harry glances around her. She hasn’t moved from her spot on the counter, the red of her lipstick still stark on her face even though now some of it is blotted on Zayn’s mouth. “So I don’t have to?”

“No,” Harry agrees with her, coffee bitter at the back of his throat. “I think you’ve helped enough.”

Gigi’s eyes light up and they could go at it right now, Harry feels a twist of anger at the back of his throat but she sinks back against the wall, nursing the mug against her chest, mouth curled up. 

Zayn heaves a sigh and steps between them, his head tucked down. “C’mon, we don’t want to miss the rush.”

Coward.

It’s bitterly cold outside and Harry’s starting to think that this winter will be endless. Maybe they _should_ escape to California, he could bundle Niall up in the back of Louis’s car and steal him away to there, away from their conniving friends and bullshit attempts at breaking into music. They could disappear into the scene in San Fran, find their own Gaslight and New York would be a distant memory. 

It could be a fresh start and they could put all this behind them. 

Harry holds onto that thought until they make it to the Park, both of them bent over with the weight of shouldering the bag of prints up the street. It’s slushy again, cool enough over night for a freeze but the thaw setting in before the snow. 

Zayn finds him a good spot and disappears to buy them a hot dog from a vendor and find more coffee, the chill catching at him already. 

Harry hates the city suddenly, claustrophobic in it’s rising skyline and bleak grey facade. All around the park the streets loom up high, holding a cold heat. When he closes his eyes, he sees the wide expanse of his mother’s front yard, white with snow this time of year, the tree that Gemma made a swing in, Robin at the upright, the comforting weight of his big palm on Harry’s shoulder when he never knew he needed it. 

Harry swallows, pulls out a curling print from near the back. It’s all greens and blues but the slope of the shoulders, the curve of the arm. 

“Oh, that one’s not for sale,” Zayn says, appearing at Harry’s elbow. “Still working on it.”

Harry glances up, catches Zayn’s fond smile before he turns away. “It’s --”

“--Niall.”

He stares down at the painting. Zayn’s right -- it’s only half done, the colours washing together and the rest just a series of faint pencil marks. 

It’s definitely Niall though, the brightness of his eyes, the curve of his mouth. He’s naked, the paint fading somewhere near his navel but Harry can see the outline of his cock, the shading of his thigh. 

Zayn’s hand looks confident, sure of himself as he’s drawn him out. Familiar. Initimate.

Harry swallows, his tongue at the roof of his mouth. He’s only had Niall like this once, the brief moment where he was able to spread him out across Louis’s bed and take his time, take him in. He knows that it’s Niall’s dick because it’s attached to a picture of him, his face relaxed, conveying every emotion and none at all at the same time. 

The person who drew it though, knows it far more intimately than that. Knows it from memory, from experience.

“Harry --” Zayn starts, reading his face. “It’s just a painting.”

Harry turns to him, eyes narrowing. All the bitterness that’s been building towards Niall and Gigi and Zayn bubbles over, milk curdling, quick to the boil. “Your fucking art. Or is it just plain fucking?”

Zayn takes a step back, a coffee in each hand. Harry wants to punch his stupid fucking face for how shocked he looks, as if he thought that he can just skip around and not worry about the people he fucks over in the process.

“Niall gave me such _shit_ for this,” Harry waves a hand between them. “And nothing even happened and here he is --” Harry looks down at the canvas, feeling a roll of revulsion and before he stops himself, sticks his boot through it. 

“Harry!” Zayn squawks, shoving him out of the way so he can’t do it again. “Fuck off. Don’t ruin it.”

Harry stamps on the ground instead, dropping the frame so it falls against the bag. It’s not a bad tear, a tiny hole where the toe of his boot as slipped through the material and the rest of it just a muddy print across Niall’s narrow shoulder. 

“You need to speak to him about this,” Zayn snaps. “And not take it out on me. Nothing fucking happened between us and Niall and I -- it was nothing -- it was _months_ ago.”

Harry glares at him, anger giving way to a hot spear of humiliation as he watches Zayn put a palm to the hole, to see how much damage he’s done. He thinks of someone smashing his guitar and cringes. “Does Gigi know about this?”

Zayn rears back, his mouth opening as he takes in the turn in conversation. It takes him a moment before he nods. “Yes.”

Harry snorts, shaking his head. “So, she’s fucking getting back at him then? Telling him about us? It’s not me?”

“Stop looking for an excuse,” Zayn snaps, his own face going red. “I don’t know what the fuck she was doing telling him but she didn’t do anything wrong. No-one did. No-one said no, everyone was on the same page. Niall wasn’t seeing anyone when we were together, you seemed pretty fucking into it when we were. Everything doesn’t have to be so complicated or premeditated.”

Harry huffs a breath, already feeling the wind fly out of his sails. He lifts a hand and pinches at his nose, thumb against his tear duct. “Then why is it all so fucking shit all the time? Why is it fucking complicated now?”

Zayn sighs, rolls his eyes. “Get the fuck out of your head and look around you. You’re too pent up in there. Focus on what you really want and go after it. Nevermind what everyone else is doing.”

It stings but Harry feels some of the anger dissipate out through his shoulders. He drops onto the bench, the stone freezing against his arse. The coffee is nearly cold but Zayn sinks down beside him, his paintings sprawled out in a disarray for passing customers. He’s losing sales probably but he doesn’t move from Harry’s side until Harry’s hands have stopped shaking. 

*

It’s with a building sense of dread, Harry heads to the Gaslight later that night. His hands feel like blocks of ice, squeezed below his armpits and his stomach in knots as he side-steps puddles and keeps his head down for the dusting of snow that’s finally making its way down from the clouds that have loomed heavily all day. 

“Tell him,” Zayn mutters, his unsold paintings slung across his back as they part ways on the street. He’s going home to pick up Gigi and they’re heading over later, together. Harry considers just going with him, maybe smoking up a little if it’d do him any good. Settle his nerves. Maybe have a drink or ten. “Go,” Zayn tells him, pushing him in the shoulder. “Just fucking explain to him.”

It’s still early but there’s a long enough line outside the Gaslight. Harry’s stomach squeezes at the sight, wondering who’s rumoured tonight. 

Sam glares at him but for once in his life, Harry’s eye-fluttering gets him through the door, a few young girls yelling at him for skipping the queue. 

“You fuck anything else up,” Sam warns him, letting him down past the rope that keeps the regular punters from the back of the stage area. “You pay for it, Styles.”

Later, he’ll appreciate the fact that Sam now remembers his name. 

The club is strange at this in-between time, all the candles lit but few people on stools. There’s a few people set up at the bar, suits and ties looking slightly out of place and a smattering of regulars in the corner, Old Ruthie holding court as she tunes her autoharp. 

There’s music coming from the little alcove at the side of the stage and Harry turns the corner, heart in his throat. Niall’s perched on a table, a guitar in his lap and his foot pulled up across his knee. Bressie is balancing on a chair beside him, another guitar slung across his lap. 

They’re working through something, heads bent down close to the strings, both of them murmuring out lyrics that twine together like they’re made to be coupled, always sung by the two of them. _Home where my music's playing, home where my love lies waiting._ Their voices work together, catching softly on the ends of words, catching together.

“Harry,” Niall breathes when he glances up and finds Harry watching.

“Hi,” Harry manages to find his voice, his stomach feeling like lead. Niall stares at him, his mouth working wordlessly. 

“Oh,” Bressie says, rocking back down onto all four legs of the chair. Harry spares a moment to wonder how it doesn’t splinter with the force. Now that they’re settled, Harry can see how close they had been sitting, their hands nearly knocking into each other as they tested out some chords. Harry wonders how much he knows. “Alright, Chief? Excited for the big show?”

“Yeah,” Harry says distractedly. Niall looks pale and is staring at him with wide eyes, drinking him in. It’s only been a day since he’s seen him but Harry’s struck with how much he has missed him, how much he enjoys seeing him again, something warm flooding through his limbs to remind him that they’re still attached. 

“Bres,” Niall says, his voice a croak. “Go get us a drink, would you?”

There’s a full pint at his elbow but Bressie doesn’t question it, getting to his feet and leaving them alone. Harry can hear the faint murmur of other patrons coming into the bar, Sam having opened the door properly now that it’s closer to show time. Tables filling up, drinks being poured. 

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Niall says once Bressie has disappeared and it’s just the two of them. 

Harry raises his eyebrows. Now that he’s here, he can’t imagine missing it. Even before when he was angry and upset with Zayn, he still planned to see Niall tonight. He’s missed enough opportunities to see him sing. 

“I’m sorry for not telling you,” Harry says. “But I saw Zayn’s painting.” Harry lets the hurt in his voice come out every bit as raw as he feels it, still there under all the other conflicting emotions he’s feeling now he’s in front of Niall again. “You never told me either.”

Niall’s face crumples. “Shit, I know, I was out of order--”

Harry scoffs. “Out of order? You can’t fall out with me for something that didn’t happen when you _have_ done it.”

Niall cringes and pulls his fingers through his hair, something that Harry’s starting to recognise is a nervous habit. He looks a little clammy, pale with nerves.

“It wasn’t like that,” Niall groans. “I know we haven’t really talked about what we are and I know you have a whole other thing going on --” he waves his hand but doesn’t meet his eye. 

Harry swallows. “That’s taken care of --”

“I’m not stupid, you’re a good looking guy, I know rightly that you have other --” Niall waves that hand again and Harry stares at him, sees how he’s shaking. --”we just got together so quickly and so -- I -- I’ve never--”

“Niall,” Harry says, exasperation taking over him and he steps forward, grips at Niall’s arms to stop him from fidgeting so much. “You’re hardly a saint yourself, the night we met you were getting off with some other woman.”

Niall opens his mouth to protest but Harry cuts him off again, taking a leaf out of Zayn’s book. _Fuck it_. “I like you, okay. I want us to give this a proper go. Just us. From now on, no secrets, no assumptions.” Harry swallows. “I don’t care who you’ve been with, I just want us to talk about it before we go off and imagine something far, far worse.”

Niall snaps his mouth shut. His eyes look very blue this close and Harry wants to kiss him, all the twisting in his gut giving over to desire. 

“I’ve fallen for you,” Niall tells him, voice hoarse with honesty. “I think that’s what’s scaring me. It’s never been like this before with anyone. I think part of me saw it as an out, oh, here’s an excuse to fuck it up before we get in any deeper and we get hurt.”

“Why are we going to get hurt?” Harry asks, his fingers digging into Niall’s arms now. He’s already hurting a little bit now but the way Niall’s looking at him is making something spark in Harry’s gut, something hopeful, a salve to how fucked up he’s been feeling all day. 

“I don’t know,” Niall murmurs, leaning closer to him. “Seems like that’s what everyone does. They get together and fall in too deeply and it all fucks up, they break up, write a song about it, write a poem, write a fucking book. At home, everyone is miserable and in New York, everyone is fucking other people. It didn’t feel real. It felt too good.”

Niall looks so earnest about it, his hand coming up to clench around Harry’s elbows. Harry breaks, laughter bubbling up through his throat. Niall screws his face up for a moment before he’s joining in, gasping over it. 

“I sound like a right asshole,” Niall says, curling an arm around Harry’s neck and tugging him into a hug. Harry can hear his heartbeat, feel where he’s started to sweat. 

They stand there for longer than they should, Harry buried into Niall’s shoulder, the rise and fall of their chests in time with each other. Out and in, ebb and flow. 

Harry feels more calm than he has all day, Niall slotting into his arms like he’s meant to be there.

“Listen,” Niall murmurs, his voice hardly audible over the din of the crowd that has gathered in front of the stage. “You can have my spot tonight.”

Harry’s heart hammers in his chest, the clammy twist of adrenaline at the split second of selfishness where Harry considers taking it. Some days he thinks he’d die for a spot on stage but he also wants to earn it, wants to know what it feels like to get there on his own merit. “You don’t have to make this better by giving me your spot.”

Niall screws his face up. “I _want_ to. This isn’t just because I’ve fucked up and over-reacted --” Niall takes a deep breath. “I want you to have this.”

Harry sniffs, glances away from Niall’s intense gaze. “I can’t, anyway. I don’t have my guitar.”

Niall’s face breaks into an unreadable expression -- guilty and excited all in one. 

“And I’m _not_ taking yours,” Harry says, he’s not jinxing it any more than it is already. He doesn’t know if he could take it. It feels like they’re still on very thin ice, Harry and Niall looking at each other tentatively. “It’s a sure sign we’d fuck this up.”

Niall barks a soft laugh, turning to reach for the guitar case behind him. Harry instantly recognises it and his heart squeezes, not willing to believe until Niall’s pushing the guitar towards him and he has it under his hands.

“You’re the person who bought it?”

“I used the money from the basket,” Niall explains softly. “It was meant to be a surprise. I was going to give it to you and then I, well I fucked up. So now it’s more of an apology than ever.”

Harry snorts softly, his heart in his throat. He runs his fingers over the strings, all as perfect as they were when he last played it. 

“I know you’ve been saving yourself but I know you’ve also been going everyday to check it was still there, that it meant more to you than you ever let on. It wasn’t going to hang there forever.”

Harry turns to him, tugs him into a proper hug. 

“I’ll pay you back,” Harry murmurs into his hair, grasping at his jaw to pull him into a kiss. Niall goes easily, his mouth moving softly against Harry’s. It settles the erratic thump of Harry’s heart, something slotting into place when Niall clutches him closer. 

“You better,” Niall says when they finally separate, Harry staying close to his mouth. He doesn’t want to let him go, he’ll go on stage kissing him if he has to. “That’s why you need to go on tonight so you can get the basket. I can’t afford dinner.”

*

In the end, Harry lets Niall tug him up on stage for one song. From the stage, Harry catches a glimpse at the whole crowd, the clusters of people tight around tables and some hunkered on the ground. There’s a palpable tension in the room, the rumour mill grinding out that Dylan might be on the bill later. 

He takes a stool beside Niall’s, fingers shaking on the strings of his guitar, a familiar weight back in his arms after all this time. 

_I have kissed you, so I’ll miss you on the road, I’ll be wanting you._

Harry blinks the glare out of his eyes, makes out the shadow of Louis and Liam and Zayn bowed around a table near the front, the heft of Bressie at the table beside them. He whistles, breaking the unspoken rules of audience etiquette at the Gaslight and if he blinked, Harry would think they were back in the bar, the whole audience in on the joke. 

Niall grins, his shoulders relaxing, at home on the stage. They had practiced this song, Niall squashing a run of songs together to practice his harmonising, fascinated when he found out how well-matched their voices were. 

It feels like years ago even though it was just the start of winter. Harry had tested out a few notes on the harmonica, jealous of Niall with his guitar. Niall was delighted, jumping from song to song, lyric to lyric, ignited by the fact that Harry could keep up. 

It was then that Harry knew he loved him, there in the cold misty morning and here on the blistering hot stage.

Harry drags his fingers up his fret, jamming in with the arrangement that Niall’s going for. He can see that same exhilarated expression across the stage, his face bright and shining as he grins at Harry. Lit up by candlelight and spotlight instead of winter sun.

Harry takes his cue, feels like he knows Niall’s every step before he takes it, fingers working over strings, both of them on the same rhythm. 

Niall’s eyes glitter, his mouth turning into an easy smile as he sings and Harry finds himself joining in seamlessly, their voices melding together. 

_But I have you, cause I love you, and you have me, cause you love me too._

**Author's Note:**

> [ Tumblr post](https://broken-drums.tumblr.com/post/189951627791/of-unpublished-rhyme-33k-niallharry)
> 
> Songs mentioned/~played:
> 
> Love to You/Tomorrow Never Knows - The Beatles (1967)  
> The Rocky Road to Dublin - Trad/The Dubliners (1964) - [this version initially inspired the scene in Niall's uncle's pub and the whole fic.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75t38K_tQ6w)  
> Lay Lady Lay - Bob Dylan (1969)  
> Ticket to Ride - The Beatles (1965)  
> A Saucerful of Secrets - Pink Floyd (1968)  
> Wake up Little Susie - The Everly Brothers (1957)  
> Gloria – Them (1964)  
> Sweet Thing – Van Morrison (1968)  
> 500 Miles - Peter, Paul and Mary (1964)  
> California Dreamin’ – The Mama and the Papas (1965)  
> Sparrow - Simon + Garfunkel (1964)  
> A World Without Love – Peter and Gordon (1964)  
> Homeward Bound – Simon + Garfunkel (1966)  
> Pre-Road Downs – Crosby, Stills + Nash (1969)
> 
> This fic was intentionally non-specifically set somewhere in the 1960s to use a range of songs (just don't look too closely at when they became popular). 
> 
> I feel like once it hits the '70s, Harry would give into the urge and go off in a psychedelic, free-love, lsd journey of self-discovery to California whether Niall went with him or not. Niall would embrace his band of merry trad musicians and go off in a spiritual Horslips or Clannad direction. They'd come back together for their Difficult Second Album, their lyrics plainly about their months of angst-ridden, hate-sex in the studio and their musical direction all over the place and they'd glare at each other across the stage as they sang about each other but it would be a hit because anything sort of goes in the '70s.


End file.
